


Till We Reach the Circle's End

by PanBoleyn



Series: Between the Sand and Stone [4]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Character Death In Dream, Disabled Character, Discussion of Canonical Suicide, Dream Magic, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Magical Theory, Marqueliot Niffins of Timeline 31, Minor Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, Multiple versions of characters, One Quentin is an Ambient Magic Force Ghost, Other Implied Relationships - Freeform, Quentin Coldwater's Canonical Oral Fixation, Royalty Kink and D/s vibes in the last chapter, Some s5 Elements Used, Temporary Character Death, Timeline Shenanigans, Two Timeline 40s and a 41 too!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 105,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23307670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: Quentin and Eliot are ready to retire from saving the world and magical crises, but they have one last mess to fix - saving another Quentin from beyond the grave.But they won't be doing it alone, not when another Eliot has been working with Alice Quinn toward the same end. Not when both their timelines' magic is a mess, and the two Fillorys aren't much better.One last mess is more complicated than they expected.
Relationships: Alice Quinn & Eliot Waugh, Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Between the Sand and Stone [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623388
Comments: 201
Kudos: 204





	1. Without A Great Divide

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I hope this story finds everyone well and safe in all the current trouble. 
> 
> This story, being the fourth in the series, really does need the prior stories to make complete sense, but for those of you just joining me, part one is set in an s4 fix-it where Quentin survived the Seam but lost half his leg in the blast, and follows his recovery and reunion with Eliot. The second and third are set in a basically canonish verse until the start of 5.03 (more or less because I have not and will not watch s5) following Eliot and Alice trying to get Q back, and ghost!Q in the ambient. This story brings those two timelines together, to fix the dysfunctional magic in both timelines and to save ghost!Q. 
> 
> One warning for this chapter - Quentin has a flashback to the blast at the Seam when Everett is mentioned to him. As ever, thanks to my writing friends and especially Maii for looking over my drafts.

_ Quentin runs, a streak of dark gold in a world of paler gold, and behind him blue comets race, Niffins trying to catch up. But he is faster, he has a shade and he can feel, and in this place where nothing is solid, the will to move is stronger than magic.  _

_ So Quentin is faster, here, but he is one and they are three, they could trap him in this world they know better than he, and so he takes a chance and he drops - _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

In an abstract sense, Eliot has understood that the other timelines exist as separate universes since they met Penny 23. Kind of hard to ignore, after that. Less abstractly, this feels vaguely like some of the Star Trek Margo or, or Quentin used to make him watch, and he’s not at all sure how he feels about it. Because for one thing, there is the obvious weirdness of two Zeldas, one watching from the other side of that freaky red-tinged mirror and one at her desk, and the even more blatant strangeness of two Alices, one next to him and one next to Other-Margo. 

Which is a different wrong altogether, a Margo who isn’t his Margo, eyeing him with more wary suspicion than affection. 

The shorter-haired Alice clears her throat. “Are you two investigating the timeline split too?” Timeline split? What?

“They fucking better be after what it did to my Fillory,” says Other-Margo. “What are you doing with Quinn there, El? No California for you in this timeline?” 

“Why would I be in California?” Eliot asks blankly. The other-Margo and short-haired Alice exchange a look. 

“Well, that’s a theory all but confirmed,” Other-Margo says. “We gonna drag the boys into this part of it after all?” 

“I don’t see how it can be avoided,” short-haired Alice says. 

“What boys?” Alice snaps. “And what is going on, what timeline split are you talking about?” 

Zelda clears her throat. “Alice, this is why I have been asking with more vehemence that you join us. Mr. Waugh, this is unexpected but we can use all the help we can get. It appears that, at the Seam… We already knew about the surges, but there was another side effect. Our… visiting Alice here informs me that she and Quentin Coldwater were dabbling in time magic right before all of that?” 

“About a day and a half before, yeah,” Alice confirms, her hand going to the pocket where the soul bottle rests. “Why?” 

“The timeline was left unstable,” short-haired Alice says. “And then the blast included time magic and probability magic because Everett sucked up everything he could and it was lingering on Quentin. Jane’s fortieth loop split in two, essentially, creating this timeline, which is yours, and the one Margo and I just came from.” She points at the mirror, and the Zelda there grimaces. 

The Zelda at the desk clears her throat. “That is the mirror Everett used to access the Mirror Realm. Somehow, it has now become a portal between the two timelines. They’re bleeding into each other. Actions here are having effects there, and vice versa. For example, Eliot. Your recent foray into time magic to save High King Fen and Josh Hoberman has caused -” 

“My Fillory’s been split into literal time zones,” other-Margo snaps. “Library lady here says yours jumped ahead three hundred years right after the blast? Well, mine was just fucking  _ fine  _ at first, by the way. Now? Whitespire’s three hundred years ahead, but you go twenty miles and they think the fucking Chatwins are still in charge. There’s some place out in the boondocks that’s three hundred years before our original present day. Oh, and our Quentin’s haunted by a freaky magic-ghost of himself, which I’m guessing is your Q?”

_ Your Q,  _ other-Margo said. That means their Quentin is - he’s alive. The realization hits Eliot like a freight train and he wants to cry, or possibly scream at someone about the unfairness of it. Because why could their Quentin survive and not his? Why - it’s not that he wants a different Quentin to have died  _ instead _ , that’s not actually a better thing, but why did theirs have to? Only, if their Quentin is alive, then maybe - 

Maybe he’ll help? Like, give them some blood or something they can use to build a new body for their Quentin? Maybe an alternate Q is exactly what they needed… and maybe he should slow the fuck down and figure out a good way to approach that suggestion. Which means, for now, being polite and listening to the conference on what the actual fuck is going on here. Even if all he can think is that another Quentin being alive somewhere on the other side of that mirror is the best hope for his Quentin they’ve had since all this started. 

Alice glances his way, and he still can’t read her all that well, but in this moment he’s pretty sure she’s thinking along the same lines as he is. 

But. Right. Be polite and ideally, useful, so as to have a better bargaining position. Just like diplomacy all over again, only higher stakes than ever as far as Eliot is concerned. 

But it turns out there’s… a slight problem with that. 

“Did Zelda just say the fuckery in my Fillory is your fault?” Other-Margo asks, eyes narrowing as she glares at Eliot. And Eliot thinks of Jane’s lecture about consequences and  _ let the dead stay dead _ like she could fucking talk, only apparently saving Fen and Josh with time magic did have consequences. So, he doesn’t regret it, not when he cares about Fen himself and it made his Margo happy, but it’s a good thing he and Alice have decided the time stamp for Q is their last resort, right?

Eliot lets out a breath and decides that the way he’d handle this with his Margo obviously won’t apply. She has an Eliot, she has a best friend, and he’s as much an interloper to her as she is a stranger with a familiar face to him. Is this how Kady feels with 23, he wonders, and has a rush of sympathy for a member of their group that he honestly barely knows. “My Margo and I were working on it, but it was my move that actually worked, yes. We were trying to save Fen and Josh - in our timeline the Dark King killed them before we saved them, what happened in yours?” 

Other-Margo’s mouth twists. “They managed to escape and the the time break thing happened so now he can’t find them. You’d better be ready to help us fix it.” 

“Fair enough,” Eliot says. “But, you know, we’re not actually investigating this timeline thing, it’s the first we’ve even heard of it.” 

“Then what are you doing?” Other-Margo asks, but Other-Alice is looking at Alice, looking at him, jaw setting in a way Eliot has been becoming more and more familiar with as he and Alice began their quest to get Quentin back. 

“Saving Quentin,” both Alices say at the same time, and Eliot nods in their direction. 

“Yes, that. And from what you said about this ghost counterpart haunting your Quentin, it sounds like you guys found him. Seems like we can help each other, doesn’t it?” 

“Oh, El is gonna love this,” Other-Margo mutters. Other-Alice makes this… odd face, that Eliot can’t interpret but Alice apparently can (well of course she can, it’s her face) because she twitches next to him and won’t look at him. And Eliot thinks about  _ No California for you in this timeline? _ and wonders if he might, sort of, already have an answer to the question of what Quentin will do if -  _ when  _ \- they get him back and he knows everything.

Other-Alice clears her throat. “I think, before any of us get to work on any of this, we need to sit down and compare notes, find out just what we’re all dealing with before we proceed. Don’t you?” 

And, well, given what tends to happen when they go off half-cocked and do shit (which is most of the time) taking the time to plan when they actually have that time is probably the best idea. There’s too much at stake to argue, even if part of Eliot wants to, so he just agrees, and when Alice does too that is apparently that. 

Time to have a meeting. Wonderful. 

Eliot doesn’t know why it strikes him as funny that the Library has something as pedestrian as a whiteboard in one of its conference rooms, but it does. It really shouldn’t, because some of the Brakebills classrooms are the same way, but Brakebills is - real. Old-fashioned fancy buildings and shit, yeah, but you can find that in half the colleges in the country if you go to the right buildings. It’s a mismatch, but not an unfamiliar one.

But the Library, with its odd light from nowhere and its faded grey-tinged everything, and the off-kilter angle the world just… exists at, well. A fucking whiteboard stands out like a flat-screen TV would have in the throne room at Whitespire. Other-Alice doesn’t seem to mind, walking over to it and taking up a marker to write down the various differences between their worlds, but given her grey pantsuit, Eliot gets the impression that she spends a lot of time here. Which makes sense, given that Alice told him on the train to D.C. that Zelda had been trying to get her to take over the Library. In a world where things were… different… it made some sense that another Alice would take that offer. 

The differences are what Other-Alice is putting up on the whiteboard now, neat writing in green marker. One interesting change is a time differential; for Eliot and his timeline’s Alice it’s only been three months since the Seam, while for the other crew it’s been seven. “Any reason for that?” Other-Margo asks. “Maybe connected to what happened to Fillory?” 

Other-Alice shrugs. “Maybe, but maybe not - we have records of the other timelines from Jane’s loops, and Timeline 27 is only in 2017. It seems like something that just happens sometimes, there’s theories that it relieves some kind of pressure on the multiverse, or something. Horomancy is tricky, and once you’re studying the universes created by time magic it’s a different field altogether that’s even  _ less  _ well-studied. The point is that it’s one of the divergences and we need to know as many of them as we can.” 

Other-Margo doesn’t argue this point, and neither does Alice - Alice, who even looking for answers about Quentin had gotten caught up in the academic puzzles of necromancers, now looks even more intrigued by this. Eliot doesn’t argue either but that’s because, frankly, he can’t be fucked to care about most of the differences. (He  _ does  _ feel bad about other-Fillory though.) Not when the very first bullet point up there is that in his world, Quentin died, and in the other Timeline 40, he didn’t. 

He did lose half his leg, apparently, but he’s  _ alive _ . 

Objectively, some of the other differences are interesting. Other-Julia is apparently a demigoddess off studying with Hecate right now, while Other-Kady is road-tripping around the country trying to knit the various hedge covens into a larger organization. Other-23 is teaching at Brakebills, which Eliot thinks might actually be happening in his timeline too but neither he nor Alice is entirely sure so Other-Alice puts it in a column for things they haven’t confirmed match or not yet.

Eliot still can’t be fucked to care. He listens politely, answers questions when they’re directed at him, and tries to figure out the best way to finagle a face-to-face with Other-Quentin. It shouldn’t be too hard to get his help, right? Especially since, apparently, the other Quentin and Eliot are already on  _ his  _ Quentin’s trail. That settles it, frankly. Eliot is going to reality-jump and help them, regardless of who might try to stop him. He doesn’t know if Alice will agree or not - it’ll probably go better if she does, but Eliot’s plans are set either way.

He just needs to figure out how to make it happen.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

Quentin is not exactly sure how time works, between Earth and the Library. Someone mentioned it once, he’s pretty sure, but he figures it must be more fluid than a set differential given how people come and go. Or maybe Librarians are spelled somehow not to lose much time? Regardless, it’s been two days for him and Eliot when the doorbell rings again. 

Quentin has gotten used to the idea of all Librarians wearing various shades of grey, so Yasirah is something of a surprise in her bright blue and green dress, her short flyaway curls so different from the female Librarians he’s seen with their hair carefully put up in one way or another. But she has a note from Alice with just a touch of tart-lemonade magic on it that proves it’s actually from her. 

Eliot takes the note, doing the cast Alice showed them that confirms it’s legit for people who don’t taste magic when they touch spelled things, and then they let Yasirah in. “You’re… colorful for a Librarian,” Eliot notes, and Yasirah grins. 

“I’m a shelf child - I am a Librarian because what else would I be, but those of us born to the grey tend to rebel against it a little more.” Her dark eyes land on Quentin, and there’s a sharp curiosity there that makes him squirm, thinking of Zelda saying  _ “I’ve read your book,” _ thinking of how Everett had known the thing likeliest to make Quentin give in so he could go home was knowing Eliot was all right. (Not that it had worked, but it might have if Quentin’s discipline hadn’t been mending.)

He really hopes Yasirah has not read his book - does Alice still have it? That’s unsettling in itself, but given she used it to save his life he’s not sure how to ask about it without being an asshole. “I know the leg’s noticeable, but I didn’t think it was that interesting,” he says finally, pretending it was his leg she was staring at because he’s going to have to get used to things like that and might as well practice ways of dealing with it. 

Yasirah smiles thinly. “Oh, I’m not interested in that. I am, however, more than a little curious about the boy who took out the worst Chief Librarian we have ever had,” she says, casual, like the words don’t land like a, a fucking bomb in the middle of the room, like -

“Oh, uh -” For a moment Quentin can’t feel anything but burning, all down his back, his legs, the searing below his knee. He definitely can’t speak, flashes of a grey room in a grey world, 23’s shock and Alice’s horror and - 

Cinnamon-nutmeg-ginger on his tongue, Eliot’s hand a warm familiar weight on the back of his neck. Quentin blinks, and he’s back again.  _ Well, that sucked, _ he thinks, leaning into Eliot’s side a little as his hand drops, arm wrapping around Quentin’s shoulders instead. 

“We’re not going to talk about that,” Eliot is saying, and Yasirah has the grace to look abashed. Eliot continues, “Alice’s note says that she told you the situation, but it doesn’t explain exactly what she thinks you’ll be doing to help. Though I hope it’s not hypnosis or telepathy.” 

“Straight-up telepathy wouldn’t do me much good anyway,” Quentin murmurs, forcing himself to engage again and stand up straight, though he doesn’t pull away from Eliot. Shit, he’s going to have to talk to Dr. Barlow about this on their mirror call tomorrow, flashbacks from someone mentioning Everett are… new. “I’m guessing hypnosis or the lucid dream stuff?” he adds, louder, directing this at Yasirah, who is looking at them with polite bewilderment like she’s never seen a couple act like a couple before. 

Maybe Librarians don’t do that? 

“Lucid dream,” Yasirah explains. “Can we sit?” 

They settle at the kitchen table and Quentin makes coffee - he wants to, the familiar motions of it settle his nerves more than a little, and he remembers James teasing him years ago about how if he could only learn to cook as well as he made coffee he’d be a good house husband for a cute guy or girl. Maybe once he and Eliot are retired, he could look up James, at least to check in on him? 

He likes Yasirah a little better when she only looks amused by the Starfleet Science mug he hands her, and the warm ceramic of his own mug against his palms is soothing when he sits down. Eliot is still very much  _ not  _ soothed and the look in his eyes suggests he’d rather like to hex Yasirah, help be damned, so Quentin hooks his good ankle around Eliot’s under the table, an easy point of contact. “So, lucid dreaming?” Quentin prompts. 

“Yes,” Yasirah nods. “First - are you familiar with dreamwalking?” 

Quentin shrugs. “Uh, my former Brakebills roommate crashed a dream of mine once and he was also able to get into a magical hallucination that I was trapped in, is that what you mean?” 

“No, that sounds like standard astral telepathy,” Yasirah says. 

“Dreamwalking’s a specific psychic discipline. Not only can they enter the dreams of anyone they like, they can build or alter dreams for people, or sometimes even bring people into their own dreams,” Eliot says, tapping his fingers against his own mug. When Quentin looks at him, curious, he flashes a quick grin. “One of my more interesting Ibiza encounters, I’ll tell you later.”

Oh, well then. Yeah, definitely not a topic for company. Quentin turns back to Yasirah. “So, you’re a dreamwalker?” 

“No, I’m a naturalist. A potioneer, primarily. But my twin sister is a dreamwalker, and we’ve spent many years working together on potions to create different kinds of lucid dreams. Your situation appears to be a psychic link between yourself and your deceased counterpart. Dreams are a good way to reach out along that tie, especially for a physically-disciplined magician like yourself. Brakebills’ methods are not always impressive but I’m sure you’re aware that most psychic magic tends to be difficult for physicals.”

_ Your condescension is much appreciated, _ Quentin thinks, because he’d actually really liked Inception and watched it enough times to be able to quote some of the better lines, but it’s just a little too corny to say it out loud even if it would be fitting. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” he says instead. “Had a professor who tried to electrocute it out of us in Antarctica, actually. So what would this potion do to me?” 

“Ideally, it would link you up to your other self and you would be able to communicate with him.” 

“Hang on, ideally? What else might happen?” Eliot asks. 

“Well, see, the trouble is, this sort of thing is meant for psychic links between two people who are alive. Or, once, a living person and a ghost, but a stationary ghost. I’m given to understand that your spirit is something more like a Niffin. So you should be able to make contact with him, but it will probably take more time than usual to achieve  _ useful  _ contact.” 

Quentin can sense that Eliot wants to ask if it’s dangerous - hell, so does he. But they both know the truth of the words Alice said to him so long ago, that there’s no such thing as safe magic. So they don’t ask. “Is there a risk of losing myself to these dreams somehow?” Quentin asks instead, because that seems like a valid danger to find out about. 

“I have no reason to think that there will be.” Which is not, precisely, a no.

“Give us a minute?” Quentin asks, getting up and catching hold of Eliot’s wrist on the way. They go down the hall to their bedroom, the door shutting with an impatient flick of Eliot’s hand. “Thoughts?” Quentin asks him as soon as the door catches. 

“We left that woman alone in our kitchen,” Eliot says, deadpan. “I’m still on the ‘I don’t like any of this and I don’t expect to’ train, Q. But I think this dream shit sounds better than hypnosis, especially after her little aside about Everett. What happened to you there, anyway?” 

Quentin grimaces. “Flashback. First time one of those happened so with any luck it was a fluke, but I’ll let Dr. Barlow know anyway just to be safe.” He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. “It sounds like our best bet. Certainly better than letting some telepath root around in my brain till they find the thread to Casper, anyway. I didn’t much like it when Penny popped up in my head or decided to rattle off shit he heard, and at least that was usually for a purpose or him being a dick but harmless. Letting a stranger in…” 

“I’m the last person to hold that against you,” Eliot says, a grim twist to his lips. “So you’re up for it?” 

“Yeah,” Quentin says. “Trial basis, reassess if necessary.”

They go back to the kitchen, where Yasirah doesn’t seem to have moved except to drink her coffee. “Have you decided to give this a try?” she asks, eyes on Quentin. 

“Yeah,” Quentin says, taking a deep breath. “We doing this now?” Might as well, if she’s brought her potion along. The past four years have left him fairly sure something’s going to go… if not precisely wrong, certainly not as neatly as Yasirah laid it out, so he’d rather get started so they get it over with sooner. 

He thinks of that gold-eyed ghost in the glass, and that makes it easier. He’s never really been good at saving himself, but he’s getting better at it. Isn’t saving an alternate self kind of a master class on the concept, with a nice sideline in the saving other people he’s much better at motivating himself for?

Yasirah did indeed bring a vial of her potion, which she hands over to Quentin readily. It tastes like how freshly-mowed grass smells, which - as potions go, it could be a hell of a lot worse. The one Quentin takes with his antidepressant tastes like the place where unripe cherries go to die, or something like that. Drinking grass is pleasant by comparison. He swallows it down and then lays back on the couch, not wanting to be caught by surprise. 

It doesn’t take long before his eyelids grow heavy, and he slips under into sleep.

_ He’s standing outside a bodega with Eliot, who shoves a box into his arms and then strides inside, and Quentin -  _

_ Wait, no, this isn’t right, why is he seeing the past? It’s like he’s outside himself and inside himself at once, observing from the side and yet feeling the box in his hands, listening to Eliot bluff his way in, standing on two legs made of flesh and bone. _

_ Julia isn’t with the hedges and that’s when Quentin realizes - he hadn’t know he remembered the color of Eliot’s jacket that day, but he knows now that the blue jacket isn’t right, doesn’t match his memory -  _

_ This isn’t right but he can’t help but be carried along by this memory, this other-timeline memory because that’s what it is, that’s what it must be. He follows along, inside and outside as he and Eliot leave the bodega, as Eliot grins slyly at him.  _

_ “So, got the book back, might as well make a day of it, huh?” _

_ And Quentin nods, memory-self giddy with it and the dreamer-self oddly melancholy because he remembers this, the breathless crush he put so firmly away because he was scared of losing a friend, scared of ruining something that already meant so much - _

_ But maybe he’d never needed to be scared, because they’re tipsy from a magicians’ bar that night, stumbling back through the portal, when Eliot tips Quentin’s chin up and kisses him on the back porch, softer and sweeter than memory-Quentin would have expected -  _

Quentin’s eyes fly open, and he presses his fingers to his lips. It aches, somewhere deep inside, to think of himself and Eliot as they’d been back then. Weirdly innocent, in some ways, though he knows if he were to say as much Eliot would deny possessing any kind of innocence at the time. And it aches again to know how near they’d been to - 

But that version of them wouldn’t have had whatever they found together for very long before they lost everything, would they? That’s the whole reason they exist as these versions, in this timeline. So he’s going to hold close the idea that there were softer times sooner, somewhere, and focus on the important part - 

“We have a problem,” he tells Yasirah, watching with blatantly avid curiosity, and Eliot who is watching with concern but he’s curious too, Quentin can tell. It makes him smile, a little, thinking of a sly smile by moonlight he never really saw, and yet. And yet. 

They have more important things to talk about, but this is still something to tell Eliot later. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

It only lasts a few minutes, which is a relief for Eliot. Quentin’s eyes shift restlessly under his closed lids, hands curling and uncurling against the couch cushions like he’s trying to grab onto something. Eliot sits on the coffee table across from the couch and resists the urge to reach for one of Quentin’s fidgety hands. He doesn’t - he doesn’t like the watchful eyes of their Librarian guest, and yes Alice’s note proves that this is the person she sent them, but Eliot still isn’t about to offer anything personal that he can avoid. 

Then Quentin is blinking awake, pressing his fingers to his mouth and looking dazed for a moment before he sits up. “We have a problem,” he says, and the look he gives Eliot is oddly searching, like he knows something now that Eliot doesn’t. But it’s fleeting, before Quentin turns his gaze to Yasirah. “Yasirah, do you know about Jane Chatwin’s time loops?” 

“Of course, why?” 

Quentin shrugs a shoulder. “I definitely tapped into a counterpart - what I saw was something that happened in our timeline, but it, ah, went a little differently.” He turns faintly red, and OK now Eliot has got to know, once they’re alone. 

“The thing is,” Quentin continues, “it wasn’t Casper. It had to have been one of the earlier thirty-nine loops, and about all I can say is that it was pretty certainly not Timeline 23, because we know a little more about that one and what I know pretty much disqualifies it from what I saw.” 

“And what makes you so sure of that?” Yasirah asks. 

“Personal relationship differences,” Quentin says tightly. “Anyway, though, that still leaves thirty-eight other timelines it could be, and I could find myself jumping into any number of them. And that’s not counting possibilities not officially part of Jane’s forty loops.” 

“Hmm, that is - fascinating. I’ve never tested this on someone who was the subject of such involved horomancy before, and especially you, I should have known.” 

“Wait, why especially Quentin?” Eliot asks suspiciously. “Because Jane made him the turning point of the loops?”

“Well, she had to, even if she didn’t know it - the Time Key she used came to his hand after all.” 

Quentin goes white. “How the hell do you know - how fucking many people at that Library have read my goddamn book? You, Zelda, Everett, how much of it did Alice read, what the actual hell,” he asks, clenching his fists. Then he stops, taking a deep breath, eyes darting to the mirror on the wall. If he can see his other self, Eliot sees no sign of it, but he knows Quentin well enough to know he looked over to remind himself why he’s doing this.

“Did you read my book?” he asks again, more calmly. Yasirah, unruffled, studies him with level black eyes, and Eliot represses the urge to snap at her himself. Also, and this is an unsettling thought, if Zelda read Q’s book, and Everett read Q’s book, had either or both of them read the rest of the books? Had Yasirah come to their door with Quentin’s life and his own memorized? 

Also, the Time Key came to Quentin’s hand? When - wait, right, Quentin told him that, but Eliot had been a little bit sidetracked by the revelation that Quentin literally died the same day that he had, on the Mosaic in their once and never life.

Yasirah clears her throat. “No, I haven’t, but I have read several briefings on the lot of you, written by someone who did read your books. I don’t know if you two are aware of this, but from the moment Jane chose you to be the figures of her loops, you became figures of interest to the Library - and to others who keep an eye on such things.” 

“That’s not ominous at all,” Eliot mutters, then adds in a more normal voice, “So what does it mean that Quentin tapped into the wrong other-self?” It’s a weird thought - Eliot hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about those other timelines until recently, and when he had, he’d mostly thought of them as… other people. Like 23 and their original Penny. Like Casper in Quentin’s reflection. 

They  _ are  _ other people, of course, the same base material as it were, but changed by different circumstances. The idea of just being able to… tap into those other timelines is a weird one.

“I’m not sure yet,” Yasirah says thoughtfully. “It depends on if this is a phenomenon shared amongst your group or only something about Quentin, due to his nature as a nexus point for the time loops.” 

“You make me sound not human somehow,” Quentin says warily. 

“No, not at all. It’s merely a technical term. Anyone can be a nexus, though as I said, in Jane’s case she probably wouldn’t have been able to make it stick on anyone else if you were part of the group. The Key recognized you, that’s the theory we have at least,” Yasirah says. “I only brought one vial today - sheer hubris - so I’ll have to prepare more, but, Mr. Waugh, might I test it on you? If you also find yourself in another timeline’s memory, that will suggest it’s a property you all share and I’ll tailor the compound differently than I would if it’s just Quentin.” 

Eliot frowns. “How will you know? I mean, sure, whatever, I’m here so you may as well use me as the guinea pig.” Also, he’ll feel a little better about Quentin continuing with this if he has an idea of what it’s like himself. 

Yasirah shrugs. “You don’t have a psychic link with anyone, do you?” 

“Not that I know of…” 

“Well, if you don’t, then the potion simply won’t work. You’ll have a brief lucid dream, but it will be a pure product of your subconscious.” 

That doesn’t sound like it’ll be his best experience ever, but Eliot’s been through worse, and if it’s a lucid dream maybe he can direct it. “Makes sense,” is all he says, even though he can feel Quentin’s worried gaze on him. 

Yasirah leaves, and Quentin turns to him. “You’re sure about this?” 

“No,” Eliot says honestly, “but I’m faster than getting someone else to volunteer, and I want this finished as soon as possible. Also, it’ll make me relax a little about you doing it, I think. What did you see while you were under, anyway?” 

“Oh.” Quentin ducks his head, a little smile on his face. “Apparently we went to the hedge bodega in at least one other life, though without me getting into a fight with Julia, you decided to show me around some of the magical locations tucked away around New York.” 

Eliot has to laugh, because actually that had been his plan, back then. Or rather, it had been phase one of the plan. He’d had to scrap it, but he’d been this close to phase two before being rudely interrupted by an exploding door. “Is that all I did?” he asks with a sly grin that for some reason makes Quentin laugh. 

“God, you look almost the same making that face as you did then,” he says. “No, you kissed me on the Cottage back porch - which is when I woke up.” 

_ Oh. _ Eliot doesn’t know if he should feel jealous of his counterpart from Timeline Number To Be Determined, or sad for him because whatever success he had would have been short-lived. What with the Beast and all. So all he says is, “I’d have kissed you in our timeline if Kady hadn’t blown the door up.” Quentin’s eyes widen and Eliot laughs again. “Q, babe, you didn’t know?” 

“I was a little distracted by my oldest friendship imploding further than it had already, especially in front of you, given that we got pretty close ourselves pretty fast and I had a massive crush on you. I really did not want you clueing in to the idea of me crushing on my friends because I figured that’d run you right off.”

Eliot moves from the chair to sit next to Quentin on the couch, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Quentin hums happily, curling into his side, and Eliot thinks of how he and Margo used to joke that Quentin was basically a cat because of his weird sitting contortions, moodiness, and ability to nap anywhere he felt like it. Also that he likes being petted. Now Eliot has him basically doing the human version of a purr, which just proves their old point.

“For the record, if I had worked out that connection, it would have had the opposite effect. You OK?” 

Quentin sighs, reaching for Eliot’s hand and playing with how their fingers fit together. “I just - they - we - were so  _ young _ . You know? Even without us having a whole other life in our heads they were so  _ young  _ compared to us now. It’s just weird.” 

“Q, do you want to keep doing this?” Eliot asks, carefully. 

“I want to save Casper,” Quentin says. “And this seems like the best way to do that, and it’s more or less safe as far as I can tell, which gives it points over most of our plans in the last four years. But I can’t deny that this was weird as shit, you know?” 

“On the other hand, that will probably be our lives even in retirement, what with the whole ‘we are still magicians’ thing,” Eliot points out, lightly scratching at Quentin’s scalp with his free hand. 

“Mm. I know. Actually, it was kinda nice, to feel… that simple again? I think that’s the weirdest part, honestly. But -” Quentin stops abruptly as the mirror on their wall chimes. Alice set it up before she and Margo left so that they could call from Margo’s compact mirror. Sure enough, when they head over there, the mirror shimmers and Margo’s face appears. 

“Hey, did that potion lady show up on your end?” she asks, but not like she really cares too much - she keeps glancing back over her shoulder.

“Yeah, first try was kind of a bust - it worked, but I tapped into a past me from some other timeline, not Casper me,” Quentin says. “Yasirah went back to rework her recipes or something like that.”

“What’s going on with you?” Eliot asks before Margo can reply to that, because something is definitely up. 

“Oh, not much, just dealing with a second Alice and a second you. It’s freaky, he’s got a beard like he’s your damn evil counterpart, El -” Margo cuts herself off, shaking her head. “Actually I probably shouldn’t say that, I’m pretty sure it’s grief beard because they’re Casper’s Eliot and Alice, for lack of a better term. We’re figuring out where to go from here but apparently they fucked up our Fillory with time magic to save Fen and Hoberman from the Dark King.” 

“The same guy who’s ruling in our Whitespire?” Eliot asks, trying not to think about that other him so close. Not yet. 

“Probably? Not sure yet, they haven’t met him. They’ve been wandering around calling necromancers and shit - oh, that reminds me. They’ve got a piece of Casper’s soul, Alice did some kind of weird golem shit? Anyway, maybe it’ll help, but I’ve gotta go, sounds like there’s an argument brewing.” 

The mirror shimmers again and she’s gone. Quentin looks up at Eliot. “You were saying about how our lives are never going to stop being weird?” 

Eliot sighs. “Hopefully they won’t keep being  _ this  _ weird. This is going to be messy.” 

“I’m relieved though, in a - a weird way? There’s something… I don’t know, a loneliness, when I dream his memories?” Quentin rubs his arms as if he’s cold. “I’m glad it’s not just us trying to save him.” 

“A world where any version of me isn’t trying to save you is a world where something’s gone fucked up,” Eliot says firmly. “Now we just have to figure out how to play nice with them, which from the look on Margo’s face isn’t going to be that easy.” 

Still, Eliot thinks, they’ve done weirder things than this. And if part of him kind of wants to bar both of their new arrivals from coming anywhere near the apartment, well, that’s irrational and he knows it. 

They’re in this to save Quentin’s ghost counterpart. Bringing people from said ghost’s reality onto the team only makes sense, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ \- and he is flying over a desert, he is flying over mountains and a tiny figure atop a peak, a flash of blue and he almost panics. But this blue is not Niffin blue, it blazes as bright but it is warmer. A fire to defend, a magic that smells of desert winds and a rich scent like coffee but not, that sounds like horses’ hooves pounding the sand. _

_ Another world, different magics, and this is what it means to be part of the magic, this is what it is.  _

_ This is not so bad, Quentin thinks again, but this is better than the velvet dark that steals memory and self. This is better than the formless gold fire. This is a world, another world, and maybe it’s in a book back home but he doesn’t know, he wants to go home so he can draw this, so he can show them what he’d seen - _


	2. Somewhere In The Stratosphere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are awkward meetings, plans are made, and a ghost falls into the grasp of Niffins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So, 5.13 was a thing that happened. Good news - our sandbox now! (I mean, it already was, but completely now.) I hope this chapter finds you well in our irl troubled times as well.
> 
> This chapter deals with Eliot and Alice of 40b's grief, and Eliot 40a has a dream of the Monster, but I think that's all the warning for this chapter.
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii and my online enablers, and to all of you for reading! Let's keep these characters alive and happy, or heading to a happy ending, shall we?

_ \- like this tiny cottage shaped like a palace set in the courtyard of a true castle, a tall blonde girl sitting beside it looking as lost as Quentin feels, a large cat stretched out beside her as she trails her fingers in the water.  _

_ And when Quentin hovers over the water, in the ripples he sees himself, only not himself, the self glimpsed with shaggy auburn hair. But another ripple and the image is gone - _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

It’s rare for Quentin to be awake before Eliot - Eliot might have divested himself of almost every hint of the Indiana farm boy he’d been born as, but one thing he never got the hang of was changing his internal clocks. Unless he’d simply gone to bed late enough to overwhelm them. But for once it’s Quentin who’s awake first, gingerly disentangling himself from Eliot and going out to the living room on his crutches to make coffee. 

He doesn’t like to sleep wearing his prosthetic, and while it’s not hard to don it, it’s easier after coffee, thus crutches are his morning routine. To be fair, everything is easier after coffee, which is why he’s drinking his when it’s still too hot, only a little cooled by the creamer he put in it. He debates trying to make eggs or something for breakfast, but cooking is one thing he’s never practiced on crutches so better to wait till he’s wearing his leg. 

Then the mirror chimes. Quentin sighs, finishes his coffee, and goes over to it, just in time for the surface to shimmer and then reveal - two Alices. One is clearly their Alice, the bobbed hair giving her away, and the other is… staring at Quentin, eyes too wide and shiny behind her glasses. Oh, oh fuck. 

“Quentin. You - you’re - you have red hair?” Other-Alice finally says, and Quentin is distantly grateful she didn’t mention the crutches. 

“Yeah,” he says, something twisting in his heart when he sees the look in her eyes. Fucking hell, this is just - awful, and on top of it, he’s got to deal with two Alices, in his pajamas and one slipper sock, which leaves him unfairly vulnerable even if the coffee’d had time to kick in. It hasn’t, and Quentin can’t keep up with the brain of one Alice without caffeine this early in the morning, much less two. 

The weird sense of survivor’s guilt is not helping. 

“It’s good to - anyway, um, Eliot is talking with your Margo about the mess with Fillory,” Other-Alice says, clearly pulling herself back together. It makes Quentin ache somewhere inside, in the same place that wants so badly to see his timeline’s Alice happy even if what he feels for her isn’t romantic anymore. He thinks of the loneliness of his dreams, and this is just one more reason to fix the situation, isn’t it? 

“Yeah, Margo filled us in a little by mirror-call yesterday,” he says, focusing on the conversation itself. “Your Fillory is time-jumped and ours is time-fractured because of something to do with saving Fen and Josh?” 

Other-Alice nods. “Initially the Dark King had them both executed, Eliot and Margo were using time magic to pull them into future-Fillory before it happened. We thought they did it without any consequences but apparently that’s only because the backlash somehow rebounded onto your Fillory.” 

Christ. Some days, Quentin still enjoys the cool factor of living a life that’s part urban fantasy, part sci-fi. This is not one of those days. Not when, in the much fainter reflection of the window, Quentin sees a flicker of gold, a silhouette like his own shadow. Nothing clearer, not this time. So he turns his focus back to the mirror, where Alice is watching him with narrowed eyes, maybe remembering what they’d both seen in a shop window, while Other-Alice looks confused.

He dreamed of running last night, running along an endless road that was for some reason paved gold, and the sky above him was gold, and he was running from comets of blue flame. Quentin has no idea what that means, or why just before he woke he looked down to find his hands full of desert sand, but he can guess it has something to do with Casper, somehow. Maybe it’ll help him connect properly this time. But just now, he has two Alices waiting for him to contribute to the conversation, and this is why it’s completely unfair they called before his coffee had time to work.

“OK, so, we’re assuming that the initial time jump in your Fillory was probably an effect of the surge, right?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Alice says. “Their timeline seems to be more affected in general by the surges too - they’re getting worse faster, causing a lot more trouble.” 

“I checked in with our Julia,” Other-Alice adds, “and she’s saying if we don’t stop it soon, we’re looking at an apocalyptic event in our timeline. I was wondering… My Quentin, he had this spell tucked away in his Fillory book, I thought it might help with some of this?” She holds it up and Quentin, recognizing it after a moment’s thought, shakes his head. 

“I don’t think so. I mean, maybe - it’s to build a world, actually, which maybe Jules could reconfigure with her metacomp skills to help fix a world instead, but honestly I just grabbed it because I thought it might make a good thesis project one day.” 

“Oh, that - that’s all it was?” Other-Alice asks, her mouth a thin line, and Quentin shrugs helplessly. Maybe he should have lied but it didn’t occur to him there would be a need to. “I thought if it was in one of the Fillory books that meant it was something he - you - valued.”

“I mean, it was important in an abstract way, something I always meant to come back to, but yeah, it wasn’t a sentimental thing, just an idea I had. I put things in my Fillory copies so I don’t lose them.” It feels so long ago when he came across it in the Brakebills library and thought it was something that might be a good project. He’d found it because Professor Carter told him that people who were good at mending like Quentin had proved to be often found they could channel that into building or healing magic, depending on the person, and had recommended a few books.

“Can you translate it? Just in case we can use it somehow?” Other-Alice asks, and there is  _ definitely  _ still an undercurrent of something that Quentin’s missing here. Did she do something with that spell because she thought it had some kind of huge significance for him - well, for her Quentin? It really isn’t his business, he decides. 

“Yeah, sure, I’ve still got my copy, I’ll get it together for you. Uh, on our project, Margo said you guys have a piece of, um, other-me’s soul?” Best not to use the Casper nickname under these circumstances. “I was thinking it might help me connect with him during the lucid dreaming shit that Yasirah has me doing. I promise I will be extremely careful with it.”

“You’ll have it the next time she comes to see you, because we were thinking the same thing,” Other-Alice says tightly.

“Great, thanks,” Quentin says for lack of a better response. “Um, was there anything else?” 

Alice sighs. “Not yet. I have a feeling we’re going to have to have a big meeting, both timelines, but we’re still working out, you know, logistics and location. Can you or Eliot try and get ahold of Kady and 23? I think I’m going to be Library-bound for a little while yet and it’ll be easier for you.” 

“Sure,” Quentin says, and then the mirror’s surface shimmers and they’re gone. 

A moment later, Eliot says from behind him, “Who were you talking to?” Quentin looks over to find Eliot making his way into the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Quentin sighs.

“Hang on, let me get my leg,” he says, and makes his way back to the bedroom to swap out crutches for prosthetic. Once he’s back in the kitchen, he starts taking out eggs, cheese, and crumbled bacon bits for omelets. The deal is, since Quentin can’t cook anything but breakfast food, he usually does that, while Eliot handles the other cooking. While he beats the eggs, he tells Eliot about the conversation he had with the Alices. 

“Why were you storing a potential thesis in one of your Fillory books when you were a first-year?” Eliot asks, amused, and Quentin shrugs. 

“When I’m not having a crisis of confidence I am a determined academic overachiever? Anyway, that’s not actually that relevant.” 

“No, but it’s easier to think about than having to avert the apocalypse. Also, if shit that happens in one timeline backlashes into the other, does that mean if their world blows up, so will ours?” Eliot asks, and Quentin goes cold. 

“I… don’t know, but presumably the side effects would not be  _ good _ , if maybe not as extreme as also blowing up. Fuck,” Quentin says as he pours egg into a pan.

“You’re doing that wrong,” Eliot says, distracted from their conversation by his cooking opinions, and Quentin rolls his eyes.

“No backseat cooking, Waugh,” he says, but he’s smiling, softly hazy memory reminding him that this is an old debate in some ways, familiar as breathing. “Also, they’re literally still liquid, there’s no way I could be doing it wrong at this point.” 

“There is an art even to that, Coldwater.” 

“You are a strange, strange man sometimes,” Quentin says dryly, and then goes back to making his perfectly serviceable omelets, thank you very much. And given that he gets no complaints once they’re eating, he figures that proves his point. “All kitchen critique aside, this is… bigger than we thought.” 

“Isn’t it fucking always?” Eliot asks, a bitter edge to his voice. “One more job, right? Of course it was going to be a big one, how the fuck did I ever think otherwise.” 

“El -” 

“No, I know. We couldn’t have left Casper hanging, it just pisses me off. It’s not his fault, or anyone else’s, just our shit fucking luck. In duplicate, apparently.”

Unless, Quentin reflects, you consider the fact that it is Casper’s fault - and his own - because when you get right down to it, this all comes back to the blast, doesn’t it? And it was his spell that set it off. Which means that, as much as he wants to be done, fixing this is, in part, his responsibility. 

Fuck. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Eliot has gone over the entire story of the Time Dwarf with Other-Margo more than once, they’ve discussed the time stamps in case they caused it instead, and they’ve gotten nowhere. Eliot’s not sure how long it’s actually been, because time is weird here in the Library. 

“You know, I’m going to be honest here and say that while I am very sorry to have caused this shit, I’m having a hell of a time focusing on helping you while someone else tries to get -” No, the first Margo he tells is not going to be Other-Margo with a grudge - “one of my best friends back after he  _ died  _ in part to save me.”

“Best friend, huh? Try that again, asshole,” Other-Margo says, then softens, just a little. “Look, I get the saving face while grieving shit, and we’re not each other’s… people. But don’t lie to me, Mirror El.”

Mirror - oh, wait, no, he remembers now, Spock with a beard, Margo and Quentin had sat on either side of him on Margo’s bed, deliberately squishing him in place and making him watch that episode of Star Trek on one of Brakebills’ rare bad weather days. (It was a balance thing; 99% of the time the campus weather was gorgeous, and occasionally there were storms so bad teachers just expected people would cut class during them.)

“I’m not evil,” he says as lightly as he can. “Even if I did break your Fillory.” 

“You’re also not Spock, but I’ve gotta call you something,” Other-Margo informs him. “We’re not getting anywhere with this shit anyway. Take fifteen and we’ll come back to it.”

So Eliot finds himself directed by a Librarian out to what looks like a typical side stair people use for smoke breaks. Except that it’s made of limestone and not concrete, and looking out at the view through air that shimmers as if in a heat haze, he sees what he’s pretty sure is a medieval city, the palace on the hill flying a blue flag with a silver crown and sword. 

He’s halfway through his cigarette, watching as above the palace flying creatures circle - they look partly human, but their wings are made of something that flashes in the sun - when a narrow hand swipes a cigarette half falling out of his pack. “Why do you smoke such weird cigarettes?” Alice asks, and this is actually something of a routine for them since that night in the hotel with the vodka. 

_ Eliot knows a spell for clearing smoke from indoors, so he feels free to light up. What surprises him is when Alice, drunk enough that she doesn’t seem willing to stand, asks for one.  _

_ “Since when do you smoke?”  _

_ “There was half a pack in Q’s things, mayb _ e _ I picked up a taste smoking them. My brother had the same brand, it wasn’t my first time.”  _

Now, Eliot says, “My cigarettes are clove, not weird. You’ve just only smoked shitty menthols before.” They’d woken up together on the floor the next morning, twisted in a duvet pulled off the bed. Eliot remembers that for a moment, the feeling of smooth straight hair on his arm had made him think -

“Whatever,” Alice says. “I shouldn’t let this become a habit, but I can’t seem to make myself care.” 

“Yeah, that’s how it starts,” Eliot says. “Librarians have the oddest views for their smoke breaks, though, so at least if you smoke around here it’ll be interesting?” 

“Pretty sure I can come out and enjoy the views of all the Library’s hidden entrances in other worlds without a cigarette, but why not.” Alice taps ash off the end of hers. “I saw him. The other Quentin. I mirror called with Other-Alice and there he was, in pajamas and on crutches, with red hair. He dyed his hair, and I somehow couldn’t see anything else, like that was  _ proof  _ somehow that he’s not our Q.” She takes a shaky breath. “I thought I could handle talking to him. I’m not sure I ever want to talk to  _ him  _ again.”

“I’m going over there. I don’t care which one of the other-ladies I have to convince, I’m going,” Eliot says tightly. He’s certain it will hurt him at least as much as it hurt Alice just to talk to him, but - Kady lives with a version of her dead lover who is in love with her friend, 23 himself has a Julia who, while she might be dating him, will never be the Julia he knew first. Quentin spent months with a monster wearing Eliot’s face. 

If they can do all that, then Eliot can stand dealing with another Quentin, one who is almost his but not at all, long enough to get his back. Can’t he? Actually, it doesn’t matter if he can’t, because he  _ has  _ to. Alice, at least, can be of use here, doing ridiculously elaborate spell theory shit to figure out the big picture problem of the two timelines. Eliot knows that he’s already too distracted by the lead about Quentin to be of any use on other projects at all.

“I know,” Alice says, and when he turns away from the nameless city to look at her, she is watching him very steadily. “I got some more information out of my counterpart after the mirror-call. She broke up with her Q after he woke up in the hospital because she - said that they both realized they didn’t really mean it, they were both just looking to still keep each other around, and didn’t understand that it didn’t have to be romantic. Also, she was furious that he took her choice, which, if our Q hadn’t  _ died  _ and overshadowed that, I would be too.”

“Alice -” Eliot doesn’t even know what he’d planned to say, so it’s a good thing she doesn’t let him. 

“He went to California for rehab, and the second that Eliot found out, he went after him like a shot,” Alice continues, chin raised defiantly as she keeps staring at Eliot. “I am not just giving him to you. Whatever is there to be settled between Q and me, we will settle, once we have him back. I don’t know where that will leave me or him, or what it’ll mean for you and what you want. But I knew you were going over there from the second I heard about California. Earlier, even.    
So, take these.” 

She offers him a folded page torn from a book first. “Zelda gave it to me. Apparently it’s known back from the days when Isiacs practiced magic at the Library of Alexandria as one of the most powerful calling spells in existence. Even the translations work, and that is rare. I’m going to keep looking - I have to help the others, but I’m going to make it clear that we also need the best way to bring Q back.”

Eliot takes the paper and tucks it away into a pocket inside his vest, his fingers brushing the playing cards he keeps tucked in there. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulls them out. “Here,” he says, handing her one. It’s from the pack Julia found in Quentin’s room, after. She hadn’t picked them up after her spell and once she left, Eliot had done so because he needed something to do. 

The card he hands Alice shows Alice herself as the Queen of Spades. The two from that deck Eliot puts back show him and Margo as King and Queen of Diamonds. And there’s one more from a souvenir pack Eliot bought while they were killing time in London waiting for Emerson Kent to be free to see them. 

That one Eliot altered, a Jack of Hearts that looks like Quentin. 

“He told me about these,” Alice says. “He was so proud of his alterations but he said they still weren’t good enough to show anyone yet.” 

“Margo and I tried to persuade him for hours, even plying him with drinks didn’t work, stubborn nerd,” Eliot replies, remembering the way Quentin had scrunched up his nose and shaken his head, insisting he could do better and  _ then  _ he would show them. He doesn’t know why Quentin made himself the King of Hearts in that deck, but when he’d considered doing the same as some kind of symbolic shit about getting him back after Julia burned the original card, something about the way the king held his sword made Eliot decide he didn’t like that card and didn’t want it looking like Q.

Alice puts her card away, and then pulls something else out of her bag. The little soul bottle shines even more than usual in the sunlight of a world whose name Eliot will never know, and he’s afraid to take it. But he does, curling his fingers around it and feeling the warmth of it pulse against his skin. 

He can remember Quentin’s pulse under his fingers, under his lips, Quentin’s heartbeat in his ear, and this is the same, Eliot would know it in his bones. All they have left of their Quentin, except maybe a vial of blood somewhere in their Fillory. “Why?” he asks, forcing the words out. His voice is so hoarse it barely sounds like his own. 

Alice shrugs. “The… redhead thinks it might help. And you’re the only other one I’d trust with it.” 

“Oh,” Eliot breathes, and for a moment he thinks it’s a pity that they can’t settle things the same way as with Arielle, in a once and never life. But the truth is, however better he and Alice get along in the wake of this absolute fucking mess, Eliot just knows that trying that would end with someone hexed bloody. And no one needs that. 

Trust is better. Alice is trusting him to take the lead on finding Q, and he is trusting that she will use the Library’s resources to find the best way to bring him back to them properly once they have him.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

It takes a week, their time, for Yasirah to come back. They don’t hear from Margo or Alice either, which Eliot takes to mean they’re very busy or time is being weird. Or both. He and Quentin get back to settling in, and trying to catch up with Penny 23 and Kady. 

“23, it turns out, is on a field trip with some baby travelers. Fogg doesn’t expect them back for a couple weeks, minimum,” Eliot reports after coming back from a trip to Brakebills, setting up in the kitchen to make dinner. Quentin is at the table, writing in his therapy journal - that’s allowed in the kitchen, artwork is not because Quentin gets charcoal and pastel dust everywhere. 

Which is both hilarious and cute, but not exactly what Eliot wants in his kitchen.

“Pete says Kady is in Seattle at least till the end of the month,” Quentin says with a sigh as he closes his journal, sticking the pen behind his ear. “Hey, you ever heard the term ‘caster’ before? As, like, a label, same as magician versus hedge.” 

Eliot thinks about it. “In passing, yeah. Before Brakebills I was on some of the deep web magic forums - didn’t want to get myself mixed up with hedges when my main goal at the time was just as much control of my telekinesis as possible. They’re opposed to going through magician schools, but they don’t really do covens like hedges. From what I could find out they’re very insular and what I could find out isn’t much. Not that I really looked. Why?”

“When I was at therapy today I got talking to one of the other patients. He called himself a caster, and I’d heard the term out at the clinic too. I don’t know, I guess it just reminded me how much of… standard magical life I don’t know even after over four years?” 

“Well, we have been busy,” Eliot points out. Still, it’s something to keep in mind, isn’t it? Hell, he’s not sure  _ he’s  _ as well-versed in the ways of a relatively normal magical life as he’d like to think either. Better than Quentin, certainly, but as he just said himself, that is a very low bar to clear. Something to consider, isn’t it? 

It’s the next morning when Yasirah shows up, a workbag in hand this time and as colorful as before in purple and gold. “Seriously, what is with the lack of Librarian Grey?” Eliot asks as he lets her in. 

“As I told you, I’m a shelf child.” 

“Yeah, what is that anyway?” Eliot asks, because he and Quentin have both been wondering about that. 

“It means I’m the child of two Librarians, born in the Library and born  _ to  _ the Library.” 

“Wait,” Quentin cuts in, looking as horrified as Eliot feels by the implication of  _ born  _ **_to_ ** _ the Library. _ “You’re not given a choice?” 

“What? Oh, no, technically we can leave so long as we haven’t signed a contract - and not all of us do sign, mostly because we don’t want to do the Underworld circuit. But very few of us do leave. We were raised in the Library, it’s what we know, and for most of us that is more than enough.”

Eliot, personally, only finds that a little less horrifying than it had originally sounded, and he doesn’t even need to look at Quentin to know he feels the same way. But Quentin clears his throat and says, “Um, Alice said you’d be bringing us something?” 

Yasirah shakes her head. “Not me. Alice will be stopping by later to take care of that. Today we’re just testing more compounds, starting with Mr. Waugh to see if, like you, he dreams himself into other timelines. Depending on whether or not he does, we’ll put you under with one of two potions I’ve brought.” 

“Right, let’s get my test over with then,” Eliot says grimly. “By the way, what happens if it is just Quentin dreaming across timelines? What will I see then?”

“In that case, you should have a baseline dreamscape that you can manipulate at will.” 

“Officially jealous over here if you get that, that would be awesome,” Quentin says from his place in the armchair, and Eliot rolls his eyes at him. But he feels a little less grim, so there’s that. And then it occurs to him that lucid dreamspace is still probably going to pull from his subconscious, which… At least the lucid part will let him control it?

“My turn then,” he says, and he downs the potion, then lays down on the couch. Quentin said it tasted like how mowed grass smells; Eliot thinks it tastes more like hay. 

But the thing’s quick, whatever it tastes like. He swallows it down, lays back again and -

_ \- oh, great, his fucking bitch of a subconscious landed him in his childhood home. On the other hand, said home is empty, which is certainly an improvement over the last time he was here. Idly, he wanders across the living room to the pictures hanging on the wall, hoping that if he focuses on the detail of the setting, that won’t bring anyone else in.  _

_ He bargains without the sudden flare of guilt when he looks at a photo of himself and his brothers, all of them stiff and uncomfortable. Those forced pictures had been a moment of brotherly solidarity - the only one they had with William and Andrew always at ease in this world, Eliot and Patrick both very not, but in ways drastically different to each other so that there was no common ground to find comfort in. Still, Patrick ran after him, if he'd known, then maybe... _

_Maybe **what?**_

_ “You really think you’re alone here?”  _

_ Eliot spins around to be faced with - well, his own body, at least, in black pants and a long black sweater and a blood-stained white novelty t-shirt. “You’re dead. Quentin threw you into the Seam, you’re long gone with your bitch of a sister,” Eliot says with a calm he doesn’t feel.  _

_ “Then why am I in your dreams, Eliot?”  _

_ “Because my subconscious hates me,” Eliot says, standing his ground as the Monster stalks over to him.  _ **_You can’t loom over me like you did Quentin,_ ** _ he thinks, hands curled into fists at his sides, eye-to-eye with this thing that almost destroyed his life. _

_ “Or maybe I never left. I didn’t, you know. I’m there, every time you touch him. I made him mine, under your hands. I made you both mine, and neither of you will ever be free of me.”  _

_ This is a dream. It’s worth a shot. Eliot shoves the Monster back with both hands and pictures him vanishing, dissolving into nothing like the Happy Place did, and he does. “Neither of us will  _ **_ever_ ** _ belong to you,” he tells the swirling dust and - _

Eliot’s eyes snap open and he’s lying in Quentin’s lap now. Unthinking, he reaches for one of Quentin’s hands, holding on tight. He doesn’t know quite why he fell asleep alone on the couch and woke up with his head in Quentin’s lap, but he… isn’t exactly complaining either. Not under the circumstances. “Uh, you were in the chair?”

“It seemed like whatever your dream was, it was a nightmare. When I sat with you, you seemed less upset,” Quentin says, and his hair is long enough now that his fringe falls in his eyes when he ducks his head. Eliot nods, squeezing Quentin’s hand to silently thank him for trying to help, then looks at Yasirah.

“It’s just Q,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t see another timeline.” 

“El -” Quentin starts. 

“Not now,” Eliot cuts him off as he sits up. Quentin has that worried line between his brows, and if they were alone Eliot would reach over, smooth it out with his thumb, but as it stands he just sits next to him. 

“Well,” Yasirah says after a few minutes, “It’s Mr. Coldwater’s turn again now.” She turns to him. “This particular variant will keep you under longer, allow you to catch multiple glimpses as you search for your ghost counterpart.” 

“Yay,” Quentin says ruefully, and the vial she hands him is a slightly different color than the potion Eliot drank. Which makes sense given all the talk about compounds. Eliot wonders if he should move but Quentin sways and tips sideways before he can suggest it. So Eliot maneuvers him to lie down in basically the same position Eliot himself woke up in. 

Which is only mildly awkward with Yasirah there. Eliot thinks he’s starting to get her number - knowledge student type, doesn’t care about what they do except as it affects her work. But it becomes exponentially more awkward when the door opens and it’s Alice. Their Alice at least, she of the shorter hair. But even Alice isn’t as… troublesome as the person who follows her. 

Eliot looks at Alice’s companion with resignation, and thinks, well, at least this time he’s looking into his own face when it actually does belong to a version of himself. So, better than a Monster, that’s for sure.

Still, there is no way this doesn’t get awkward as fuck, is there?

  
  


<><><>

_ \- wait, no, come back, Quentin thinks desperately, because his other-self is the only one who can see him, is his only hope. He tries again and he’s…  _

_ For a moment, just a moment, he sees his other-self lying still in his Eliot’s lap, and there is a tug toward his sleeping counterpart. Quentin tries to fly forward but something knocks into him, sending him spinning through the air, and for a moment he sees an Alice with short hair, and next to her is -  _

_ It’s Eliot. It’s  _ **_his_ ** _ Eliot, how he knows he can’t be sure but,  _ **_oh_ ** _ , he does know. And Eliot has something in his pocket, something that calls to Quentin in a whisper of his own voice but before he can do anything there is another crash and all his world turns to blue flame and wrong-familiar laughter - _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's play a little game - if you know the worlds making cameos in this chapter, tell me in your comments! A hint: both come from books Q was reading in _If I Could Fall Into the Sky._
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	3. Looking At You Through The Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are even more awkward meetings, and Quentin gets a look at several ways the other timelines went wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I hope this chapter finds you well!
> 
> This one's pretty heavy warnings-wise - we're dealing with Eliot 40b's grief, as well as a retelling of the end of 4.13 with all the warnings for suicide/suicidal thoughts that implies. Also, we get into less happy timeline peeks here, so warnings for character death and Niffining out, as well as for Eliot's Timeline 1 death specifically (and Quentin 1 not coping well at all) and Quentin 23 being a very disturbing mind to look into post-resurrection. Also, the Marqueliot Niffins of Timeline 31 are possessive and creepy, fyi.
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers, especially Maii, and to all of you for reading.

_ They play with him like a toy, their laughter echoing in his ears. Quentin is spun through magic in a thousand thousand shades, but always the blue wrapped around him, holding him fast.  _

_ What happened to you, silly boy?” Margo whispers, and he thinks he sees her eyes, flickering brown to blue and back again.  _

_ "Why do we care, he’s ours now, we have two of our boys,” Eliot says, and the touch of his magic is almost like the grip of his hands when he’s in a claiming mood - _

<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

Quentin feels himself tip sideways and then -

_ He’s lying on the ground, blinking up at the ceiling, and that’s strange, because wasn’t he just walking by the river? The river of fire, he’d found it fascinating, there was so much about the Underworld that was just interesting if you managed to get out of the Library and the bowling alley. _

_ “Quentin?”  _

_ He knows that voice, that voice with its uncertain tremble. He used to love that voice, didn’t he? He remembers… he remembers sitting at a coffee shop, watching her turn her hand invisible, he remembers Julia playing wingman and how Brakebills South wasn’t so bad because Alice was there and they were still in their honeymoon phase…  _

_ Quentin sits up, he looks at Alice and he feels nothing. “Hello, Alice,” he says, and his voice is too flat, she looks scared, how pathetic. But, no, he has to try and be what he was, that useless weakling who got himself killed for no good reason. He has to pretend long enough to find Martin, to make him pay for the pain Quentin remembers his last moments as being.  _

_ So he smiles, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m a little confused yet, Vix. You saved me, how did you do it?” He remembers what love feels like, surely he can pretend for a while? Alice throws herself on him, holding on tight and trying not to cry into his shoulder. Quentin hugs her, pets her hair, and tells himself this will be easy.  _

_ He only has to pretend for a little while - _

Fuck, fucking fuck. Sheer horror helps Quentin separate himself from that particular dream, for which he is very grateful. Suddenly, 23’s simmering dislike of him makes more sense than it ever had. If that is what Quentin became in his world, well, who can blame him? 

He tries to wake up but he remembers this potion is supposed to keep him under longer so - 

_ This is familiar, the room filling with moths, but it’s not the classroom, it’s one of the rooms in the Cottage. They were just having a movie night, him and Eliot, Julia and Margo, Alice and Kady and Penny. Penny had just been mocking, again, on how convenient it was for the other four that they were two sets of best friends who managed to fall for each other, and Kady’s telling him to stop complaining before she and Alice rethink how lucky he’s going to be.  _

_ But it’s true, actually. And for once Quentin had been the one more comfortable in his own skin - Margo had been Jules’ bi awakening but Quentin already knew he liked guys. The shock had been Eliot liking him back.  _

_ And it was just a normal night, fun, Quentin lazily thinking back on this because he’d seen the movie they’re watching multiple times and it’s not actually a favorite when the room fills with moths and the last thing he knows is that he - can’t - move… _

_ They’re all standing, bewildered, in a grey elevator, the doors open and - _

Fuck, fuck, Quentin really wants to wake up now. Also, Margo and Julia? Penny, Kady, and Alice he can almost see, in a weird way, but Margo and Jules? He’s not sure if he wants to tell them to see their faces or never say a word. 

He’s in a sort of foggy void now, between dreams, which you’d think his subconscious could do better for a waiting space. Quentin tries to think, tries to focus on his dreams of Casper, on standing with Penny and watching the people he loves mourn him because that’s the clearest dream he’d had -

_ And he sees it more vividly than ever, he’s standing there but he feels nothing, not the wind making the trees rustle, not the ground under his feet or the heat of the fire. He can feel his own lack of heartbeat. And he can hear them singing, it’s a weird song choice but Kady never did know him well. He takes it in the kind spirit he thinks it was offered in. And all he wants, all he wants is to go back, to go back to them and tell them he’s sorry, he never meant to leave and he never will again.  _

_ He wants to make Julia and Alice stop crying, wants to take the shock off Margo’s face, he wants to hug Eliot until that awful pain is out of his eyes. He wants to fix this broken thing but Penny is telling him that he already did, Penny is telling him this is what he was meant to do and of course it is, of course he did better by them in death, he wants to go home but he has no right to want that when this is what was necessary. _

_ “Time to go,” Penny says gently, and his hand on Quentin’s shoulder is the only thing he can feel. _

_ “One last look,” he pleads, but then he lets Penny lead him away and the last he hears of the song is Eliot’s voice rising over the others -  _

Quentin gasps awake and he’s shaking, he feels sick. “Almost. I got him but too early, just a memory, oh God -” He barely realizes he was lying in Eliot’s lap, he sits up and buries his face in his hands, trying to breathe. “Fuck, oh God. Penny - our Penny, or his original, or maybe there’s only one of them because the split was after he died, I don’t fucking know but he -” 

“Q, you need to calm down,” Eliot says, and Quentin feels himself being turned, Eliot’s hands on his wrists drawing his hands from his face. But he shuts his eyes, not yet ready to see the world again. He can’t, he’s not - 

“Penny told him dying was what he was supposed to do and he, he believed -” 

_ “What?” _ That is also Eliot, voice raw with pain, but it’s coming from… too far away… 

Quentin’s eyes snap open and sure enough, there’s Eliot in front of him, holding his hands and searching his face, but then looking at someone behind Quentin. Deep down Quentin already knows who it is, and oh shit he just said the worst thing he could have said, didn’t he. But he braces himself and looks over his shoulder anyway, to find himself looking at, well, Eliot again. 

He’s different, Quentin thinks, trying to focus on that. Hair still long like the Monster kept it, but slicked and pulled back like he can’t be bothered with his usual level of effort but he’ll tame it somehow. He’s in an all-black suit, he looks like he’s barely slept, his beard is mostly neat but a  _ beard  _ has never been Eliot’s style. Stubble, sometimes, but not a full-on beard.

Quentin thinks of himself in the midst of the Monster mess. Shadows under his eyes, too thin, only showering so Julia wouldn’t ask questions when he didn’t. He looks at Other-Eliot and he can’t help but see himself, and if he didn’t already know his Casper-self had been lied to, this would be enough to prove it.

What an absolute nightmare.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

He’d thought he was ready. Maybe he would have been, if he hadn’t walked into the apartment the Eliot and Quentin of this timeline share to find their Quentin asleep in his Eliot’s lap. Even the presence of Yasirah, the dream magic specialist Other-Alice had mentioned, proving this was magic, not a lazy day or something, doesn’t help.

He takes a step back, then another and another till he hits the wall, bracing himself against it as he fights to catch his breath. Worse, somehow, than seeing a living Quentin who isn’t his is the look in Other-Eliot’s eyes. The fucking  _ sympathy _ . Eliot wants to punch his face in. 

“OK, everyone just calm down here,” Other-Alice says, but then Other-Quentin is waking up and having a panic attack, which Eliot hates himself for being relieved by. But he is relieved, because it gives him time to get ahold of himself. At least, until Other-Quentin starts talking, breathless and upset and shaken. 

“Penny told him dying was what he was supposed to do and he, he believed -” he says, and the bottom just - falls out of Eliot’s world. 

_ “What?” _ he chokes out, and then Other-Quentin is turning to look at him, horror and guilt and something worse than sympathy in his eyes. He’s looking at Eliot like he  _ understands how he feels _ and that. That just won’t do. God, fuck, Alice had been right, this is impossible, that face and those eyes and it’s Quentin but it’s not, it’s not, the red hair like a fucking alarm light telling Eliot this isn’t the right boy. 

He barely knows what he’s doing until he finds himself on the house’s back stairs, sitting on the concrete step and trying to breathe. They live in a nice part of Brooklyn, Eliot thinks with a sort of bleak amusement. Quentin lived in Brooklyn during undergrad, he knows, because for his twenty-seventh birthday Quentin had gotten him cupcakes from his favorite bakery - Margo had told him - and apparently it had been Quentin and Julia’s too. Because they’d lived within blocks of each other.

They’d talked about it again during that first year at the Mosaic, idle conversation about the places they both remembered. A coffee shop, a Chinese place, a little postage-stamp park. Quentin had turned thoughtful, Eliot remembers, a blue tile forgotten in his hand.  _ “We must have seen each other at least once in all that time,”  _ he’d said. _ “Could have been fun, to have met back then.”  _

Eliot had laughed and told Q a story about the three months in sophomore year he spent playing cliche hipster, fedora and chunky glasses included, and how that Eliot, still trying out personas to make his own, might have matched up to freshman Quentin in a baseball cap and nerdy t-shirts. Eliot hadn’t wanted to admit that he probably would have aimed at seducing Q for a night and walking away, which if it had then been followed up by Brakebills in exactly the same sequence… Well, God only knows. 

He wishes they had met like that. Before magic was a big factor - it had been in Eliot’s life already, of course, but once he’d gotten control he’d mostly been able to ignore it until Brakebills. Before things were complicated. Just two college kids meeting in line at the coffee shop, or waiting for their takeout orders. What if they had, what if they’d been friends first that way, what if Eliot had held onto it despite the secrets Brakebills enforced, for one year. Just one, and then Quentin would have been there with him. 

Would it have changed things with Margo, to have Quentin first? The idea twists in his chest but Eliot… doesn’t think so. He thinks they are both his fixed points, and even if the order of meeting had been reversed he would have found his Bambi too, there never would have been a choice about it. 

But maybe the three of them - or the four of them, he has to think he’d have known Julia then, things would have been different that day at the bodega - would have held together. Fillory would have been different, the quest… 

Eliot closes his eyes, clenches his fists. But that didn’t happen, and Quentin died, he died thinking he was - he died not knowing that Eliot - and apparently he was in the Underworld being told he was supposed to die. And of course, fuck, his Q who always wanted to be a hero, that desire mixed with a brain that kept trying to kill him, of course he believed it. Of course, on being told that his death made him the hero, of course he  _ fucking bought it. _

How could anyone tell him that, and for it to be Penny? Fuck, he’d believe it even more, Penny and Quentin’s relationship was a weird sort of thing where Eliot suspected they both enjoyed ‘hating’ each other far more than they would have a standard friendship. But there had been trust there, so to hear it from him… 

“Quentin, no, he was lying,” Eliot says to empty air, because apparently his Q is hanging around here, that’s why Other-Quentin can see him, isn’t it? He probably isn’t here right now, but it’s - what else can he do? And anyway, the soul grain is in his pocket, some part of Quentin is here and Eliot can’t help himself. 

“He was lying, or just fucking wrong, it wasn’t true, it couldn’t ever be true.” Except for how… From what Alice said there really was no other move that would have worked, in those last moments at the Seam. 

And sure, maybe that would be true, if in the house behind Eliot there wasn’t a Quentin Coldwater who survived making that choice. Not unscathed, that’s true, Eliot saw the prosthetic foot and ankle and he’s sure that was months of difficult recovery, but he’s fucking breathing in there, isn’t he? Proof goddamn positive that Quentin didn’t need to die for his last-second plan to work.

When they get him back, Eliot will make sure he knows it. Maybe he can recruit Other-Quentin’s help to make the point. 

And that thought, half-idle, reminds Eliot why he’s here. He is here to get Quentin back, and his best chance of that is dealing with the alternate versions of himself and Quentin. Which he’s doing a stellar job of, so far. And so Eliot takes a deep breath and gets up, dusting off his pants and going back inside like he didn’t just take off. 

Inside, Yasirah has set up in the kitchen, with Other-Eliot eyeing her warily. But it looks like she’s just cooking something down that smells like grass. Actual grass, that is. Other-Alice and Other-Quentin have their heads together over a notebook, apparently comparing notes with input from Other-Eliot… and the two men are holding hands. Eliot has a feeling they don’t even know they’re doing it.

Right. OK. Eliot takes another deep breath and clears his throat. “Sorry about that,” he says, keeping his voice as even as he can. “How can I help?” 

That gets him - OK, he’d expected the happy couple to exchange looks, but that they both included their Alice in it surprises him a little more. What were they doing before he came in, talking about how to be nice to the fucked-up visitor from another world? 

That isn’t fair. He knows it isn’t. He doesn’t give a fuck.

“You have the soul grain,” Other-Alice says carefully, and no, OK, he’s not going to be treated like a skittish animal.

“I don’t need you to handle me,” Eliot spits. 

“We’re not handling you, we’re being decent fucking people,” his own counterpart snaps, and Eliot glares at him. Unperturbed, Other-Eliot continues, “This mess sucks for all of us. It’s worst on you right now, though, so we’re trying to -” 

“What? Make it better? You can’t.” 

“I mean, the whole plan here is to fix all our current problems,” Other-Quentin cuts in, and Eliot whirls on him, suddenly glad for the anger that lets him actually look at this… _ wrong copy _ of the man Eliot’s lost.

“Can you fix that apparently my version of you thinks it’s a good thing he died? You’re the one who said as much, so tell me how we fix that, Coldwater.” 

Other-Eliot’s eyes narrow but he doesn’t say anything, not when Other-Quentin doesn’t so much as flinch. Damn him and his understanding. Eliot hates him. Eliot wants to hate him, to hate both of them for being happy, for having each other. But while he’s hated himself for a lot of things, hating another him for finally wising up just doesn’t make sense, and as for Other-Quentin… 

He can’t hate a Quentin, not any Quentin. 

That’s the worst of all this. He can’t even hate them for having what he’s lost, what he might never have. It would hurt less if he could hate them. 

“We get him back,” Other-Quentin says quietly, and his gaze is very level. Eliot suddenly thinks,  _ is this what my Q looked like talking about getting me back? _ He knows how determined Quentin was to save Alice, once, he knows what Alice has said to him about Q during the Monster mess. But this quiet steady calm feels somehow new, like it’s something he’s never seen before. 

“And after we get him back, I recovered, so I know he can too. Not alone, but we both know he’s not going to be, don’t we?” 

And Eliot doesn’t exactly have a counterargument for that, does he?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

Eliot’s grandmother used to like to say “there but for the grace of God” a lot. It’s not Eliot’s thing, because even as a kid the only good thing about church was being in the choir. But his grandmother was the only adult in his childhood that he… trusted, even a little. So he remembers things like this, or her various cookie recipes. He remembers, but he’d never quite been sure what she meant by it. 

He thinks he gets it now. He watches his counterpart flee the room in the wake of Quentin’s awful little revelation, watches him come back and lash out at everyone but Yasirah, who is over at the stove brewing up more potion from dried mix packets like her potions are teas. It’s no surprise that it’s Quentin who gets through to him, with the same steadiness Eliot remembers from that day in one of the clinic gardens. 

Other-Eliot drops into their last available chair, and it’s certainly weird to see the act from the outside but Eliot can still pick out from the line of his shoulders just how much his counterpart wants to slump into the seat. How exhausted he is. But that won’t happen, because he has - because  _ they  _ have - too much pride to allow it, especially in a situation like this.

There but for the grace of something or other, Eliot knows that could be him. Knows that it almost was, lack of disintegration aside. He still doesn’t know if Quentin’s aware that his heart stopped during one of his seizures. Eliot certainly hasn’t mentioned it, but someone else might have. So, one little change and the only difference between him and his counterpart would have been whether or not there was a body to bury.

It’s something he’s tried not to think about. It’s something that he can’t help thinking about, with visual evidence of who he’d be if it had happened literally sitting across from him. 

“So,” Alice finally says, breaking the charged silence. “Quentin definitely made progress -” 

“Not exactly the word I’d use but sure,” Quentin mutters, and Alice kicks his good leg lightly. 

“You managed to catch hold of Cas- of your 40b counterpart,” she says with a glare that Eliot thinks is mostly teasing. “Not where you needed to, but it’s still progress. Do you remember what you were thinking that let you do it?” 

“Yeah, and that might have been part of my mistake. I’d dreamed the funeral before, so I thought of that. Even as a foggy dream it was, um, hard to forget as an image. That’s probably why it’s what I saw.” 

“Wait, what do you mean, you saw the funeral?” Other-Eliot demands, fists clenched white-knuckled in his lap. 

“Uh. Penny took… him there,” Quentin says carefully. “Not sure why Margo’s fairy eye didn’t pick them up, maybe some kind of Underworld cloaking mojo, but they were there. That’s… where Penny told him he did the right thing.” 

“He saw us fucking - mourning him and he thought we didn’t need him?” Other-Eliot asks, voice tight with restrained fury. Eliot feels himself tense in response, sympathetic anger rising in him because that’s such fucking bullshit and if it were him he’d be too angry to see straight, holy fuck. 

“Penny sold it as he’d saved you, that you’d all have so much ahead because he did. It was a pretty good spin, all things considered.” 

Eliot goes cold at the thoughtfulness in Quentin’s voice. “Q -” Because if he’s starting to think that Penny had a point…

“Relax, El, I’m not buying it. But… I would have, right after I woke up. When I thought Jules and Margo were trying to ship me away and you were too hurt to be woken up. When I was still exhausted by everything. I would have been vulnerable.  _ He  _ was vulnerable, because he died by being too tired to remember why he was supposed to keep running. That, that’s the divergence with him and me, for whatever split-second thoughts reason I had a different thing pop into my head. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was a move to rush him through, honestly.”

“You’re right,” Other-Eliot says. “My Alice and I were talking to necromancers, and one of them told us that if someone’s death is prevented using their Library book, when they actually do die they’re rushed through. Apparently it’s something that is standard knowledge among necromancers. He said that something like what’s happened to Q had happened before, right down to being trapped in the magic. That’s why I have a summoning spell - he said we’ll need to summon Q out of the magic.” 

Eliot has the oddest feeling of being almost shut out, with the intent way his counterpart is watching Quentin and no one else, and Quentin seems ready to return that focus. He doesn’t know what to make of it, just knows that he doesn’t like it. “So was Penny trying to help by rushing Cas- er, the other Quentin through, or just doing his job?” he asks, half because he wants to know and half to interrupt the staring contest.

“Penny’s clever enough to have made it both,” Alice says, thoughtful. “My counterpart was mostly talking about our… mutual acquaintance, Alex Shepard, and the advice she’d offered about golems. And the summoning, which still applies. Our Q has a connection to his alternate self but the last thing we want is for them to be co-inhabiting one body. I could probably fix that, if it happened, with the same spell I accidentally split myself with, but…” 

“Then there’d be two of us short a leg and no one wants that,” Quentin says and it’s mostly a joke, only a little bitter. Eliot rests a hand on his bad knee, just above where the prosthetic meets skin, and this time he doesn’t feel guilty when his counterpart’s jaw tightens at the sight. He really didn’t like that little staring contest.

“You, uh, don’t seem to have much trouble with it,” Other-Eliot says, and Quentin shrugs. 

“Practice,” he says briefly, then leans forward, elbows braced on his thighs. “So, what, we use me as a telephone to get his attention, then… um…”

“Your Margo calls me Mirror El,” Other-Eliot says dryly.

“That’s hardly fair, you’re not evil,” Quentin says like some kind of nerdy reflex. “But, anyway, you summon your Q once I’ve got his attention, maybe… Is that it, Alice?” 

Alice nods. “We need something to put him in. A crystal would probably be best, it’s more secure. I’d suggest a mirror, because we could talk to him if he was in a mirror, but he’s not a pure ghost, he’s something more like a ghost-Niffin hybrid and I’m not sure a mirror would hold him. You’d have to explain that too, though, warn him.” 

“So the idea is keep him in our world the only way we can till there’s a body to put him into,” Eliot asks and gets nods from both Quentin and Alice. “And the summoning doesn’t work on his own because there’s too many places he could be, since he has… all of magic to wander in?” 

“Exactly,” Alice says. “I only saw a fraction as a Niffin, and I only remember a fraction of that. What I can recall is still immense. That’s why Quentin’s link to him matters so much, but he needs better control, which is why -” 

“The new potion over there. What’s that going to do, exactly?” Eliot asks, looking over his shoulder at where Yasirah has commandeered his stove. 

“If it works as it should, Mr. Coldwater will be observing the memories he taps into, rather than experiencing them,” Yasirah says. 

“That’d be a fucking relief,” Quentin mutters. “Wait, do we have a crystal? Because if I get him today…” 

“Right here,” Alice says, pulling a purple crystal out of her bag and holding it up. “And we have the soul grain, which should help direct you. At least, that’s what we think.” 

Other-Eliot makes a face, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a bottle filled with golden energy. Quentin looks at it with the oddest expression, like he’s enthralled by it. Eliot shakes his shoulder after a few moments too long, and Quentin blinks. “Oh, shit. OK, I can handle that but I shouldn’t look too long, that was weird. How much longer for the potion?” he calls over to Yasirah.

“Another half hour or so,” Yasirah says. 

“Right. I have a few mirror calls to make, can I borrow your guest room?” Alice asks, holding up a compact. 

“I’m going for a walk,” Other-Eliot mutters as Quentin shows Alice toward the guest room, and he doesn’t wait for a response before he gets up and walks out. 

Well, it’s a good thing they don’t know the neighbors yet, Eliot reflects, because otherwise he might have to explain the presence of a moody, bearded twin brother. Although he probably wouldn’t want to spend any spare time in this apartment either - even a quick look around shows a mix of both his taste and Quentin’s, a print of Eliot’s favorite painting on the wall across from a framed fantasy novel map poster of Quentin’s being just one example. 

Eliot gets up, going into his and Quentin’s bedroom and flopping back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was only two weeks ago when he and Quentin lay awake in the dark, conjuring a multicolored night sky, but it feels like so much longer as he sends a single green spark up to circle over his head. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

Quentin goes out to the living room just long enough to confirm that Yasirah is still at work, then heads toward his and Eliot’s bedroom. He isn’t surprised to find him lying on the bed, but he is a little surprised to see a little green spark floating near the ceiling. “Hey, mind if I join you?” 

“I never do, do I?” And there’s… something off in Eliot’s voice, something that trips an alarm bell in Quentin’s mind. So he sits on the side of the bed instead of lying down, so that he can still see Eliot’s face.

“Hey. Talk to me? What’s going on?” 

Eliot looks over at him, trying and failing to feign indifference. “My dreamscape conjured up the Monster, and I don’t like how my evil twin looks at you, or how you were looking at him. It’s nothing, I’ll get over it.” 

“Yeah, OK, neither of those sound like nothing, El,” Quentin says. Eliot rolls his eyes, sitting up as well. 

“What do you want me to say, Q?”

“I don’t know, just to not dismiss what’s bothering you as nothing. We’ll get to the Monster in a minute, but as for Other-Eliot…” Quentin pauses, running a hand through his hair. “He’s a version of you, I’m - not actually capable of not caring about any version of you. But that isn’t really… I look at him and I know how he feels because… When I was in love with Alice, I watched her die. I buried you at the Mosaic myself. I thought I was going to have to again, figuratively speaking, in this lifetime. It’s a hellish place to be in. But, if you’re actually jealous of yourself -” 

“I didn’t say that. I know that’s stupid,” Eliot cuts him off, but something flickers in his eyes. 

Quentin shakes his head a little, then leans forward to kiss Eliot softly. “He’s not you. Almost, maybe, but almost doesn’t count.” They have California, and months of rebuilding behind them. It could never be the same, as far as Quentin’s concerned. “I want to help him, and the other me, I want them to have a chance to find their own version of what we have, but that’s all it is, El.” 

“I know that, I do, just… Got under my skin.” 

Quentin thinks how he’d feel, if it was the other Eliot they were trying to save, and the other Quentin who had crossed worlds to do it. He… probably wouldn’t like it very much. “Well, just remember, I’m no one’s but yours, and that applies to alternate versions of you too.” 

That actually makes Eliot laugh, and they lie there for a bit watching his green spark dance over their heads - Quentin thinks of the green light Gatsby talked about, but honestly he’d never really liked that book. “You saw the Monster?” he asks quietly. 

Eliot sighs. “I hate talking about things.”

“I know,” Quentin tells him, “but not talking about them didn’t exactly go well, did it. Besides, we’ve talked about the Monster before.” 

“I know.” Eliot’s voice is oddly blank, and Quentin rolls up on one elbow to see him better. Eliot’s eyes are open but his gaze is far away. “He said he was still in my head, that you and I would always belong to him. That he made sure of it with all he did to you using my hands. And I know that’s not fucking true, I just… It makes me wish all the more that I could have been the one to throw him into the fucking void, you know?” 

“I’m not sure the revenge was exactly worth it, from my perspective, but I get it,” Quentin says, thoughtful. 

“What do you mean?” At least Eliot’s gaze is on him now. 

“I mean… I shouldn’t have insisted on going at all. I did it because, in the end, I wanted to be the one to banish him. But I should have stayed with Margo to wait for you. And 23 and Alice should have chucked both bottles right away, I still don’t know why we didn’t throw both at once, honestly. Though I guess Everett might’ve killed us all if we had, who knows.”

Mostly, Quentin tries not to think about it. He has enough of it dreaming about his counterpart, honestly. 

They lapse into silence again, before Eliot says, “I was in my parents’ house. With the fucking Monster. Pity I couldn’t feed my father to him too.” He still doesn’t look exactly happy, but there’s a faint sharp smile playing across his lips, and maybe that has to be enough for now. 

They hear the door open, the low voices of Alice and Other-Eliot, before Yasirah calls that her potion is ready. “The potion might be ready but I’m not sure I am,” Quentin mutters as they get up. 

“Do you want to hold off?” Eliot asks. 

“No,” Quentin says. “No, I’d rather get this over with. If that soul grain is the key we might be done with the dreams today, and that would be worth a little more bullshit.” 

Back out in the living room, Yasirah hands him one of his own coffee mugs - SGC logo - partway filled with blue potion. It smells like cough drops, and when he drinks it down, it tastes like them too. Quentin makes a face as he lies down on the floor, a couch pillow under his head. He’d nearly fallen off the couch last time so this seems like a good idea. 

“Be careful with this,” Other-Eliot says as he kneels down next to Quentin long enough to hand him the soul bottle, and there’s just the slightest edge of a threat there. Like he knows it’s not necessary but can’t help himself. 

Quentin thinks of telling Julia and Alice that no, they were not going to find another stone, not when Eliot was still alive, and he nods. He takes the bottle and rests it on his stomach, carefully folding his hands over it. He can see his Eliot and the other one both from this angle even as his eyes grow heavy, the pair of them each other warily like cats who aren’t sure if they’re about to fight. Drowsily, he thinks Jane never saw this coming and -

_ \- Shit. Apparently, thinking about Jane had been enough to send him the wrong way, because this is… It must be the Clock Barrens, Quentin realizes, astonished, but if nothing else the potion setting him apart from the memory works because there’s Jane in full Watcher-Woman garb, a Quentin trailing after her. He’s unshaven and pale, shadows under his red-rimmed eyes.  _

_ “If I help you, then you’ll give him back? You said you would, you said the questing creatures can’t help me but you can, so what do you want me to do?”  _

_ And Quentin has a flash of his own memory, of asking the White Lady to bring Alice back, overlaid by a memory that must belong to this Quentin, like he can see his memories instead of living them. Asking a different questing creature, one he doesn’t recognize, for a life, but not Alice. Eliot.  _

_ Asking for Eliot because he… because they’d only had five weeks together, Quentin giddy at someone liking him back before some fucking idiot naturalist student told Eliot that sure, those two hallucinogen potions go well together and. And he’d died, and Quentin had found him, and he’d have probably followed him right there except then Alice found Quentin with Eliot’s - with Eliot, trying to wake him up even though he knew better. Trying anyway, each spell a desperate pointless plea. Alice had called for help, and gotten Quentin out of there, had stayed up with him all night so he didn’t ‘do something stupid’, in her words.  _

_ “What do I have to do?” the Quentin who must be the very first Quentin, holy shit, is asking Jane. Jane looks at him, and though her expression is kind, her eyes are cold, calculating. Quentin knows his past self won’t see it, is too desperate to see it. It makes himself furious, for this boy who is almost the boy he was, for himself and his friends, all the versions of them that came between, because  _ **_they were never Jane’s toys_ ** _ and  _ **_how dare she_ ** _ use his pain for - _

_ “The Beast is my brother, Martin. I need him stopped.” _

This is not what Quentin came to see, and he closes his eyes, willing himself away, back to the grey fog between dreams. Standing on nothing, he thinks of the glimpse of Casper-Q he got yesterday, the flashes in mirrors and window glass. He thinks of the soul bottle under his palms in the waking world, the warmth and gentle pulse of it -

He  _ slams  _ headfirst into a wall of blue flame, then tumbles head over heels until - 

_ He’s standing in Eliot’s bedroom, watching a different Eliot, Margo, and Quentin stand around a pentacle chalked on the floor. “This had better clean up easily,” Eliot is saying with a sniff, and Margo rolls her eyes at him.  _

_ “Oh, stop whining. Once we get this ward up, we’ll be un-fucking-touchable, and next cooperative cast can be sex magic, will that cheer you up? We’ve gotta start showing little Q the ropes, right?”  _

_ “Margo!” Quentin’s counterpart says, shocked and giddy and embarrassed all at once.  _

_ “No, she’s got a good idea there,” Eliot drawls. “Don’t worry, little Q, we’ll go easy on you.”  _

_ “Since when have either of you gone easy on me?” Quentin retorts, but then Margo clears her throat.  _

_ “OK, boys, time to go, unless we want that Mothman fucker to wreck our shit, which we do not, remember?”  _

_ Hey, a ward isn’t a bad idea, thinks the older Quentin watching them as they cast, white lines of magic connecting them. Why didn’t they think of that in Timeline 40? Well, truthfully he knows why, because they were a mess that only got worse from the moment Mike was revealed as the Beast, fucking Martin knew what he was doing there.  _

_ So, good idea, but clearly it didn’t work, and Quentin assumes Martin stops them, braces for the whirl of moths but that isn’t what he gets. He gets Eliot’s hands sparking blue, blue flames racing up his arms to spill over his entire body, a scream more surprise than pain.  _

_ “No!” And that’s both Margo and the other Quentin, one panicked shout of denial and their eyes turn from brown to blazing blue because of course if Eliot’s already gone, of course they’d both follow, holy fucking shit - _

Quentin opens his eyes to find four faces staring down at him, two of them almost the same face, and he can’t speak around the way his heart is pounding, the way he can’t catch his breath. And he remembers his last dream, remembers running in an endless world of gold, chased by blue comets. The soul bottle heats briefly under his hand and he hears an echo of wild laughter, Eliot’s and Margo’s and his own in unison, and he knows the cadence of a laugh like that.

He knows, because - 

It’s Alice’s gaze he finds, unable to help himself. “I think Casper’s been caught by Niffins,” he says, because this wasn’t complicated enough, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ \- “I don’t see why we need two of me,” Niffin Quentin grumbles, but he’s the one whose blue-spark hands runs over Quentin’s face, or the outline in gold flame that would be a face if he had a true body. “I want to know what happened to him, why does he feel so much older than me?”  _

_ And no, Quentin thinks, that’s not yours, I might not be a person anymore but my memories are mine -  _

_ Except they’re not, nothing is when he has no defense against a mind that is his own. _

_ The world rocks suddenly, a thud like someone trying to break past the Niffins’ wall of blue flame, and Quentin sees brown eyes, a fringe of auburn hair, feels a hand around his nonexistent wrist, thinks he hears his own voice without the Niffin-crackle say “where are you” but he can’t answer before the touch is gone - _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, the "there but for the grace of God" and the SGC mug are both references to Stargate SG1, the show which made me love alternate timelines to begin with. The former is, in fact, the title of that show's first alternate reality episode. If I hadn't fallen in love with the concept via this show over fifteen years ago, this fic would almost certainly not exist. 
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	4. Who Is The Lamb, Who Is The Knife?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are multiple cross-reality conversations, the gang gets a time limit, and Casper makes a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I hope this finds you well, both in mind and body. Especially given the year this fandom has had, and the way the world is currently off-kilter.
> 
> Warnings in this chapter include more dealing with grief and discussions of suicide. Also references to pedophilia because Plover crops up in this chapter. (Well, in a manner of speaking, and don't worry, we'll never see him again.) If anyone spots a warning I missed, please let me know!
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii and my other enablers, and to all of you for reading.

_ \- and he’s alone with the Niffins again. Alone, but not helpless. There has to be something he can do, some trick. He can see the magic as well as they can, is as much a part of it as they are. Surely there is something he can do? _

_ He has power too. He has strength of his own. Didn’t he come back from the void, rebuild his identity from the dark nothing of limbo? Didn’t he run from them, keeping ahead for a good long while before they caught up? Hasn’t he broken through to some other world where he survived the Seam, and been seen by the version of himself who lives there?”  _

_ Isn’t there a piece of his soul still in the living world, didn’t he see, somehow, that Alice drew it from him and now Eliot carries it?  _

_ “He feels so different,” Quentin hears his Niffin-self say.  _

_ “It’s his shade, baby,” Niffin Margo laughs.  _

_ “No, he’s so old,” Niffin Quentin says, but Quentin is too focused to care that his life, both of his lives, are freely accessible to these nightmare versions of himself and two of his favorite people.  _

_ “Oh, what are you doing, little golden boy?” Niffin Eliot sing-songs.  _

_ Quentin ignores the blue tendril like a finger trailing down the length of his would-be body, because he remembers, Niffins are a kind of shadeless, and Julia told him, when she’d faced the evil shadeless him in Timeline 23, what she’d done was - _

<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

“What?” Eliot demands, and it’s probably a little unfair while Other-Quentin is still on his back on the floor, but what the fuck. Also, did he just call Eliot’s Quentin Casper? Come to think of it, both Other-Eliot and Other-Alice had stopped themselves from something that began with Cas-. They’ve named his Q after the fucking Friendly Ghost, and Eliot kind of wants to snarl about that except that Quentin himself would probably get a kick out of it. 

Other-Quentin sighs, and covers his eyes with one hand. “I said,” he says tightly, “that my counterpart was caught by Niffins. Who are, unless I’m wrong, a me, Eliot, and Margo from one of the other loops.” 

“That’s a hell of a leap, Q,” Other-Eliot says, and Other-Quentin only shakes his head as he sits up, leaning into his Eliot a little either for support or comfort. Or both. 

“No, I don’t think so. I got a little detoured when I first went under, but once I refocused, trying to find my other self I hit a wall of blue flame. Exactly like Niffin fire. And I sort of - it jolted me into another timeline glimpse, where you and Margo and I were doing a cooperative cast, some kind of ward. You went up in flames first and we… followed you.” 

“Timeline 31,” Other-Alice mutters, and when all three of them look at her she shrugs. “The Library has summaries of the prior loops. When we realized Quentin was skipping along the loops trying to find his ghost counterpart, I took a look. In Timeline 31, that’s when the three of you Niffined out. The rest of us were all killed by the Beast a couple of days later.”

“Wait, could you pinpoint which timelines I’ve seen, like, all of them?” Other-Quentin asks, diverted by his own curiosity apparently. 

“I mean, probably, it depends on what you saw. Some of them were only slightly different so if you saw something that applied a few times there’s no way to narrow it down further. Do you want to know?” 

“I mean, I’m a little curious -”

Christ, it’s like herding cats. “Hey, you guys can do that another time, can’t you?” Eliot asks, with as much patience as he can manage. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his own counterpart duck his head to hide a smile - of course they would both know that while the rambling is entertaining, sometimes you just don’t have time for it. “Does this help, at all?” 

Other-Alice nibbles on her lip as she thinks, and Other-Quentin silently hands Eliot back the bottle. Unlike last time, this time their fingers brush when Eliot takes it, and for some reason Other-Quentin looks surprised. “Huh, slightly different,” he mutters under his breath. Eliot considers asking what’s different, but decides it’s not relevant. 

“I think we need to send Quentin in one more time, to see if there’s any way to help ghost-Quentin break out,” Other-Alice says finally. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Other-Eliot asks. “You think Quentin should go up against three Niffins? What the  _ fuck _ , Alice.” 

“The danger to Quentin is minimal,” she snaps. “He’s not actually there, all he’d really be able to do is give advice, maybe moral support, and that’s if he can actually make contact with ghost-Quentin, which is a pretty big if. Otherwise he’ll just be watching like he’s done every other time, and watching can’t hurt him.” 

“What about the danger to my Quentin?” Eliot cuts in, and Alice rolls her eyes. 

“God, the pair of you and Q, I’m going to knock some heads together,” she mutters under her breath, then lifts her chin. “Also technically minimal. When I was a Niffin I dealt out more than my share of death, but the thing is, he’s as incorporeal as they are. It’s why Quentin’s cacodemon couldn’t really kill me either. I’m almost certain he can’t even feel physical pain, so… They’ll be toying with him, but they can’t damage him. Being a ghost puts him past that, in an awful sort of way.”

“If the danger’s minimal, then…” Other-Quentin trails off, looking down at his leg. “Maybe we can add some extra protection to this one, like a ward or something? Just to be safe.” 

“Quentin -” Other-Eliot starts. 

“I’m not charging in, El. But we’ve come this far. Let’s see what our options are, you know?”

It is, Eliot reflects, a very weird thing to see that expression from the outside. But he does still know the look on his counterpart’s face all too well. It’s the one where he wants to believe Quentin isn’t about to do a reckless thing, but he isn’t sure. It’s not a feeling he’s ever particularly enjoyed, but to see it from out here on another version of his own face, when he doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel it -

God, how does he even miss the bad parts? How does he even miss the worry, the times when Quentin was a snippy little fuck, in the worst of his dark moods, or terrifyingly reckless, how does Eliot miss  _ all of it _ ? He hated some of it, he knows he did, knows he will again - the spirals, mostly - but now, now he’d take even a Quentin who can’t get out of bed, who lashes out at any attempt to help or stares numbly into space, if it would mean he was  _ here _ .

Eliot realizes then he’s missed some of the conversation, so he clears his throat. “Sorry, I think I missed that last bit?”

Other-Alice looks like she’s just refraining from rolling her eyes. “We need to figure out how to get your Quentin free of the Niffins, but it’s not our only problem. We need to start coordinating, both Earths and both Fillorys. Your Alice is trying to get in touch with the rest of the 40b group, preferably Margo or Julia. Once that happens, our Margo’s going to go - Eliot?” 

Other-Eliot looks over. “What?” 

“Margo wants you to go with her if she’s meeting with her counterpart. She said to tell you that no, this isn’t a stealth attempt to get you to join the rebellion, she just wants backup before having to deal with herself. Quentin, you should probably stay here, we don’t know how reality jumping might affect your connection to Cas- to the other Quentin, or your ability to dream along the timelines.” 

“Makes sense,” Quentin sighs. 

“What about me? Because I was just getting in the way at the Library,” Eliot points out. “I could start looking through their necromancy texts, figure out the best way to build a body but I really don’t think I’ll be able to put much effort toward the magic and Fillory problems. Not right now anyway.”

“No, I think you should stay here. I’m not sure -” 

“We have a guest room, if it’s not too awkward.” That offer, surprisingly, comes from Eliot’s counterpart, who shrugs. “Easier than stashing you in a hotel somewhere, and safer. We have wards.” 

“I - thanks,” Eliot says, honestly taken aback. 

“Don’t mention it. Really. Don’t,” Other-Eliot says dryly. 

And so that’s how Eliot finds himself unpacking his knapsack in a guest room with drawings on the walls that he recognizes as Quentin’s work. Nothing he can place - looks like scenes from books - but still, he knows Quentin’s art almost as easily as anything else about him. It hurts, but in a cleaner sort of way than usual. 

He sets the soul bottle on the bedside table, and next to them, propped up against the lamp, are those playing cards. King of Diamonds Eliot and Jack of Hearts Quentin. The tiny faces stare back at Eliot as if to say they’re keeping an eye out, as if to remind him why he’s doing this. 

He doesn’t need the reminder, but something about looking at them, in the faint golden glow of the bottle, is inexplicably soothing. And  _ that  _ he does need.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

One would think that if one’s days were filled with timeline shenanigans and dreamwalking, that the everyday things would fall by the wayside. And one would be wrong, at least in Quentin Coldwater’s life. He still has physical therapy twice a week, after all, and still has mirror-call therapy sessions with Dr. Barlow once a week. He does these in his and Eliot’s room, a two-way silencing ward up so he can’t be overheard, interrupted, or distracted. That’s even more important now, with Other-Eliot in their guest room and regular mirror calls from Margo or the two Alices.

After this one, Quentin slumps back on the bed for a moment. Dr. Barlow is, understandably, concerned about the effects of Casper and Other-Eliot on his recovery - and the timeline glimpses, though since those are brief, she’s less worried about them. They did discuss them all today, and Quentin had broken three pencils talking about the Timeline 1 snippet.

“That’s better than bottling up your anger,” Dr. Barlow had said, and Quentin had actually laughed. She wasn’t wrong but it was still somehow funny. 

Still… He makes himself sit up, removing his prosthetic. One of the things he’d learned at the clinic was that after therapy it helped to do his “homework” exercises from physical therapy, because focusing on his body got him out of his head for a while. And just now he has a particular trick to learn. He’d told Cassandra, his new physical therapist, that he doesn’t like wearing the prosthetic to bed so he uses his crutches in the morning or when insomnia hits, or after sex until he gets around to putting the leg back on (which had been weird to tell a stranger but sort of necessary). So she’d decided it was time for him to learn to use just one crutch. 

That’s what most of Quentin’s sessions have been focused on lately, and he finally feels steady enough to practice in the apartment. He starts with a few circuits around the room, then undoes the silencer with a twist of his hand and makes his way carefully out to the living room.

Where he finds only Other-Eliot sitting on the couch, reading one of the books Alice brought them about Niffins. Glancing at the cover, Quentin’s pretty sure he read that one back when Niffin Alice was living in his tattoo, actually. “Did I miss a summons or something?” he asks, with a casualness he can’t quite feel when faced with Eliot’s counterpart, this too-thin bearded version who reminds Quentin less of Eliot than of himself while the Monster was around.

“Your Alice and mine are having a conference with both Zeldas,” Other-Eliot says with a shrug. “Your Eliot and Margo went over too, but I think they’re actually headed for Fillory. I offered to keep looking for a ward that will protect you if the Niffins notice your presence.” 

“I appreciate that,” Quentin says, making his careful way past the couch to the kitchen counter, then to the door and back toward the kitchen. 

“Why are you doing that?” Other-Eliot asks, and Quentin sighs, leaning against the kitchen counter. 

“I need the practice.” 

“Yeah, but you have a prosthetic leg, why would you want the crutches?”

Quentin has to remind himself that it’s not actually a stupid question, but it is an example of what he’d told Eliot the other day, isn’t it? They might be technically the same person but they are not the same. “I don’t sleep with the leg, it’s uncomfortable, so I still use crutches.” 

“Was it hard?” Other-Eliot asks, and Quentin decides that he needs to be sitting down for this conversation, so he makes his way over to the couch, sitting on the opposite end - it’s easier to get up from the couch than the armchairs when he’s not wearing his leg, he’s found.

“What? Losing my leg?”  _ What do you think? _ is what he wants to say, but it’s unfair. Besides, there’s something in Other-Eliot’s eyes, some look he can’t quite read but makes him cautious all the same. “It was hardest at the beginning, some days it’s still hard, but… I guess it’s a little like a new quest? Except instead of huge magical consequences it’s to reclaim my body. And it’ll never be entirely over.”

“You always did like a quest,” Other-Eliot says, and now Quentin can read the look in his eyes, he knows that he isn’t really the person Other-Eliot is speaking to at all. Not exactly, anyway, especially not when he’s fiddling with something in his pocket. It makes Quentin uncomfortable, and so does the way Other-Eliot is staring at his stump. 

Discomfort makes him mean when he says, “Also, you can stare all you want, it’s not going to grow back.” 

Familiar-but-not hazel eyes meet his (not  _ wrong  _ like the Monster, but still not  _ right _ ) and there’s temper there now, and focus. “That’s not why I’m staring. I’m staring because you lived. That happened but you’re still -  _ here _ . And I get you had a hard time, but you survived it and I just, I keep thinking, why is it only you?” 

“I don’t know,” is all Quentin can say, helpless. “I don’t think he fully understood, It must have been a, a split-second different thought.” _ I barely thought the thought, _ he can hear his Eliot saying long ago (except back then they weren’t split into these a and b halves, were they?). Who knows better than Eliot the difference a stray second of thought can make, when magic on a knife’s edge is involved. 

“What did you think of?” Other-Eliot asks through gritted teeth. 

“I don’t -” 

“Tell me, damn it!”

_ Why? It won’t help, and those thoughts are mine! _ Quentin thinks, frustrated, but staring into those eyes he can’t say it. Because that haunted look is too close to the one he saw in a dingy bathroom mirror at a roadside diner, balsam wood splinters still clinging to his clothes from broken planes, the Monster’s voice echoing through his mind.  _ You should know that your friend Eliot is dead. I felt the moment his soul died. I promise he didn’t suffer. _

“It’s… kind of a blur, now,” he says, quietly. “I just remember thinking - I couldn’t let Alice see me die, I hadn’t told Julia good-bye, and I’d promised you I’d come back.” That is one of Quentin’s few clear memories from that day, Eliot sprawled on the forest floor, one hand weakly catching at Quentin’s shirt hem.

_ “Q… Q... gotta tell you…”  _

_ “Hey, don’t push it now, El. I’ll be back soon, we’ll talk then, I promise.” _

How close Quentin had come to breaking that promise, how much he’d tried not to think about Eliot’s words, convinced that whatever it was wouldn’t matter when Eliot was properly awake and lucid.

“Yeah, and he promised too,” Other-Eliot says, bitter. “So why couldn’t he remember it?” 

“I don’t know,” Quentin says, trying to be gentle but honest too. “Maybe he did but a second too late. Or maybe his Alice and 23 were a little slower - they grabbed my hands. I don’t know, I’m sorry, I didn’t see that clearly.”

“He was supposed to come back. He said he’d come back. Why couldn’t he - why -?” 

Other-Eliot’s voice cracks and he stops talking, burying his head in his hands as if that will be enough to muffle the sobs he can’t hold back anymore. And Quentin, thinking of biting down on his own fist to do the same, thinking that this isn’t his Eliot but he still can’t bear not to help, acts on instinct, scooting closer and pulling the other man into a hug. He half expects to be shoved away, does not expect Other-Eliot to sink into it the way he does, to hold on in return like Quentin is the only anchor in a world flying apart.

“Why did you go, you didn’t have to, I was almost home, I know it was hard but you didn’t have to - I can’t -  _ damn it, _ Q -” The half-choked words stop, replaced by more raw sobs, and Quentin can’t say anything even if he’d thought it would help, his own heart breaking a little. Other-Eliot isn’t really talking to him, he knows, it’s just that he’s… the Quentin who’s here, right now. So he lets this man who is almost-but-not-quite the man he loves cry his heart out against his chest, rocking them both a little in an attempt to soothe, until the storm of tears ends. 

“We’re going to fix this, I swear, and he wants to come home, I felt it,” Quentin finally says when there’s only the sounds of their breathing. “He just fucked up, for just a moment at the wrong time.” 

There’s more to it, of course. The months of trauma, the steady spiral down when he couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time, when what little sleep he got was in snatched moments. Quentin knows all too well the damage both he and his counterpart did to himself, because he was months recovering from it on top of losing his leg. But it does boil down to that moment, that one wrong moment - 

Because they didn’t go there to die. They had still been one, when they knelt on the ground in the trippy woods and promised Eliot they’d be back. Quentin knows they went there for revenge and for relief - to see that thing go because they needed to. They did not go there to die, they did not cast the mending spell to die, they only did it because there was nothing else left to do. 

It was just that, partway across the room, one of them finally lost that war with their brain, and one of them came within a breath of doing the same.

And Quentin says none of this, because it won’t help. Because right now, those particulars don’t quite matter.

Neither of them move for a while, until Quentin realizes that Other-Eliot actually fell asleep, and his stump is going numb. Carefully, he eases out from under the sleeping man’s weight, bracing himself on the couch arm until he can get his crutch and his good leg under him. Standing now, he goes to put his leg on and get a spare blanket. 

Sleep won’t heal anything, not really, but it’s still the best option after a crying jag like that. And it’s what he’d like someone to do for him - what has been done for him, his Julia and his Eliot both, at different times. So Quentin covers Other-Eliot with a green fleece blanket and takes up the book on Niffins he’d been reading, settling in the armchair to do research. 

He was right about having read this one before, he recognizes it immediately, but he’s looking for different things now anyway. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

Being back in Fillory is strange. Being back in Whitespire is even stranger. Knowing that all this is true, but also that he’s in the  _ Fillory of another timeline _ just makes all of that much more true. He’s standing in the throne room that used to be his, looking down at the very dead body of Christopher Plover, because they managed to walk in right after an execution. As you do. 

“So Plover was the Dark King?” he asks, for lack of anything better to say. He shifts his grip on his cane - his leg’s been behaving so far but no need to push it. “How’d you manage to kill him?” 

“Unraveled the spell on him,” Other-Julia says from where she’s leaning against a pillar. No wonder Other-Alice hasn’t been able to get in touch with her, if she was in Fillory 40b instead of Earth 40b. “And then Margo blasted him.” 

Other-Margo, who’s already taken her seat on the High King’s throne, smiles that sharp smile Eliot’s always loved but somehow… Somehow… 

He finds himself thinking of his counterpart, unshaven and exhausted, finds himself wondering why Other-Eliot had teamed up with  _ Other-Alice _ , and not his Margo. But that’s not exactly his business. Next to him, his own Margo clears her throat. “Good. You can show me how you did it, because you bitches owe me one.” 

“And how is that exactly?” Other-Margo asks, narrowing her eyes. “I mean, sure, two dead pedophiles is better than one dead pedophile, but I don’t see how I owe you shit.” 

Margo scoffs. “Your Eliot’s over on our side of the split, and the two of you fucking around with time to save Fen and Hoberman? Made a mess in my Fillory. I’ve got at least six different time zones, by which I mean Whitespire’s in the future, but twenty miles from there they think the fucking Chatwins are still running shit. So you owe me. Supposedly your Eliot’s the one who actually did the thing, but he did it for you, and he’s busy.” 

“Busy with wh-” Other-Margo sighs. “He’s still trying to bring Quentin back, isn’t he?”

“He’s doing what?” Other-Julia says. “Why didn’t I know about that?” 

“Because I want him to stop, not encourage him?” Other-Margo retorts, and Eliot is stunned. He can’t have heard that right, can he? But he doesn’t have to find the words to ask, because Margo, her hand suddenly gripping his tightly, speaks up instead. 

“Why aren’t you helping him? Q’s ours too. I know I fumbled that shit a little but mine was still alive, I had time to be pissy with him,” she says, eyeing her counterpart suspiciously. 

“Because Quentin’s  _ already gone _ , and I don’t want Eliot to follow him while trying to bring him back. Which is what will happen unless he uses time magic, which will just fuck up every -” 

“Oh, you have no right to bitch about fucking shit up with time magic,” Margo snarls.

“So boo-fucking-hoo, your Fillory’s fucked up. We’ll help you fix it, chill. I’m talking about fucking up the return of magic and setting a psycho book-fondler with insane amounts of power on us. Quentin wouldn’t want us to fuck up everything he fixed just to save him, we all know -” 

“You’re not wrong,” Other-Julia cuts in, “but if they have a lead, if there’s some way -” 

“He didn’t have to die! My Q did all that too and he made it out,” Eliot says, still horrified. “He lost his leg but he made it out. Time magic could, it could fix all of this for you right away, he just has to keep running and not stop. He killed himself, he just needs to know that he has to hang on a minute longer and he can do that. I know he can do that.” Why didn’t Other-Eliot bring up whatever time magic he’s got on hand? Why are they risking Eliot’s Q on these dream wanderings when they could just fix all this? 

And if they reset 40b that far, then Fillory 40a might recover, it might fix everything. 

“He didn’t kill himself, it was a sacrifice,” Other-Julia says faintly, looking sick. Other-Margo doesn’t look much better. 

“No, it was suicide. Our Q’s been tapping into yours, he’s a ghost stuck in the ambient,” Margo says bluntly. “He knows what happened, he saw it all. Your Eliot and mine here, and our Q? They’re on track to find him, and we’re gonna save your nerd because apparently most of you can’t be fucking bothered to try.” 

Other-Margo leaps to her feet. “You didn’t see his face because you didn’t have to do what I did, you didn’t have to tell your Eliot about that and see something - fucking -  _ go out _ in him, some part of him just breaking forever. I was hoping he and Quinn would’ve had a falling out by now and he’d stop but - he’s gonna kill himself trying or he’s gonna get us all killed and he wouldn’t  _ listen  _ to me -”

“No,” Eliot cuts her off. “My Margo’s right. We’re on track. Now, we need your help to fix what you fucked up for our Fillory, and we all have to figure out what’s going on with the magic. But we can save your Q too. We are going to, and no one else has to die, we don’t have to lose anyone else.” 

He sounds a little like Quentin himself, Eliot realizes with some amusement. But he means it, is the thing. Penny died during the Quest, and maybe - maybe they didn’t try hard enough for him. Eliot vaguely knows Alice tried something, with Julia’s help, but he never did get the details. Having 23 around made it easy to forget they were a man down, sometimes. But now, Eliot finds himself thinking of Kady, who he still doesn’t know that well but - but -

She lost Penny. Penny didn’t get to be saved. And now, he’s a loyal Underworld Librarian of all things, sending people off to the afterlife with pretty-sounding lies.

Eliot can’t help but think that they should have tried harder for Penny. Maybe they would have, if they’d gotten magic back and not been immediately fucked by Fogg, the Library, and the Monster practically in one fell swoop. 

Maybe most of 40b should have tried harder for their Quentin, and maybe Penny is on all their hands. 

And there’s other losses too - the hell Julia went through, his own experiences with Mike, his and Fen’s lost baby, Margo’s eye, Kady in the mental hospital. Julia’s shade and then her magic, Alice’s Niffining, Quentin facing Niffin Alice, Shadeless Julia, and the Monster in Eliot’s body one after another. Other things Eliot doesn’t really know about because he wasn’t involved in them, but that he’s peripherally aware happened. Or the losses of other timelines, which they know so little of, but Quentin’s told him about every glimpse he’s seen and they all know Timeline 23 is a shitshow. And they died a lot, so there’s that.

In the very first timeline, they were just a bunch of magical grad students before Jane took advantage of Quentin’s grief. Maybe  _ that  _ is the biggest loss of all, the lives they were supposed to have, as normal as magicians ever get. 

It really does sound like something Quentin would say, but Eliot is _ sick of it. _ He is sick of their little almost-coven being the ones to pay price after price, over and over. That’s why he and Q want out, but maybe that’s beside the point. Maybe the point is to make this last mess  _ their  _ last job. All of theirs, so that they can all finally just  _ live _ . Or, at least, have possible continued adventuring be optional. Eliot figures it’s possible not all the gang wants to settle down like he and Q are doing, but still. This shit? Needs to stop for all parties. 

“You really think all of that is doable?” Other-Margo asks, her eyes on Eliot. 

“Surprisingly, yes,” he says, and it really is a surprise, but he does. Mostly because he’ll be damned if they don’t, but that’s enough to be going on with, isn’t it? 

And so it’s agreed. Other-Margo has to settle things in Fillory, but they leave the portal they used open for her. It leads to the Library, where they can cross over to 40a.

Eliot and Margo are headed back when footsteps behind them make them turn. Other-Julia smiles, a little awkwardly. “Let me come back with you? I want to help. If not with Q, then with the research into what’s happening with magic.” 

“Why? You could do that from home, your Alice says she’s been checking in off and on,” Margo asks, and Eliot takes her word for it because he’s had nothing to do with Other-Alice. Hasn’t even met her outside of mirror calls.

Other-Julia’s mouth twists. “I got my magic back because we lost Q - it came back at his funeral. I thought it was him moving the cards at first, his ghost or something. Anyway, it felt like a sign. And I’ve been trying - to find something to be  _ worth  _ that. I thought helping Margo take out Plover, save Fillory, was a good start. But… saving two timelines and getting my best friend back into the bargain? What could I do that would make it matter more?”

Margo and Eliot exchange a look, and then Eliot offers a hand for Other-Julia to take. “We could definitely use more help. Welcome aboard.”

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

It takes almost two days for Quentin’s Eliot to get back, with their Margo in tow - as well as Other-Julia and Other-23. Other-Julia stops dead at the sight of Quentin, eyes flicking quickly down to the prosthetic clearly visible below the cuff of his jeans, but then back up to his face. She looks about to cry, and Other-23 puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezing briefly before letting go. 

“I, uh. I know you’re not my Q, but can I hug you anyway?”

Well, fuck, what could he possibly do except agree? So Quentin nods, and a minute later he’s being squeezed almost tight enough to hurt, Other-Julia’s face pressed into his shoulder. She’s using the lemon shampoo she used to use, he realizes, remembering with a half-pleasant ache how he and James used to joke about Julia being a lemonade person. Her hand brushes against his skin where his shirt’s riding up, and the flavor of her magic washes over his tongue, tart white wine with something sharper under it, the same unidentifiable herbal note that undercut the spice of Eliot 40b’s magic, making it a little more bitter than his Eliot’s magic is. 

It’s interesting, because his Julia’s magic tastes like champagne, bubbly and dry. Human versus demigoddess, maybe? 

“I love your hair, and that leg’s a fucking kickass design,” Other-Julia says, leaning back and blinking tears out of her eyes, reaching over in a painfully familiar gesture to brush Quentin’s bangs back. “Better than the blue, for sure.”

“Almost anything would have been better than the blue, though maybe not the green you had to turn your hair to next,” Quentin says, amused in spite of himself.

“Why is there no photographic evidence of this?” Eliot laments as he and Margo head over to the coffeemaker to help themselves to some. Other-23 follows them, looking distinctly uncomfortable, but determined somehow. Quentin is glad he decided to make a full pot twenty minutes ago. 

Before either he or Other-Julia can answer Eliot, though, a voice cuts through the surprisingly good mood. “So, what, now you’re willing to help?” Other-Eliot asks coldly, eyes glittering with temper and focused on Other-Julia, who stiffens and steps away from Quentin. 

“That’s funny, because I don’t remember you asking -”

“You’re the one who told Alice to get rid of the golem and that’s why she thought we had to dump this!” Other-Eliot says, brandishing the little soul bottle at her. “Do you know what would have happened if we had? The well she wanted to use goes to fucking Limbo! We would have doomed him forever!” 

Other-Julia crosses her arms. “First of all, how Alice chose to give our Q back the bit of soul she ripped away from him has nothing to do with me. If you want to bitch about a research fail, talk to her. Second, of course I told her to undo the spell with the golem. I thought she was hurting Q’s soul and the golem was a twelve-year-old boy who she seemed to want to  _ keep _ ! She couldn’t do that.” 

“ _ Obviously _ she couldn’t do that, but what about your seance that you just forgot about?” 

“I didn’t forget, I asked Alice for help and she shot me down. Next thing I know, I stopped at her mother’s house and found myself staring at Quentin circa sixth grade! I was going to ask you for help instead but then you and Alice took off. If I had known you guys were onto something real, I’d have been right there, but as far as I knew there was no way to get him back without causing another disaster like in Timeline 23.” 

“Which no one wants, even if I get why you’d want to try anyway,” Other-23 says, and from the look on Other-Eliot’s face, Quentin isn’t the only one to find this hint of offered sympathy weird. Something’s up, but what? 

“Right, what you fuckers have here is obviously a failure to communicate,” Margo says loudly before anyone else can speak, clearly done with the arguing. “But now we all know where we stand, so let’s cut the crap and make it happen, huh?”

This turns out to be easier said than done. Yasirah is working on yet another brew that she says should have defensive properties, just in case, and in the meantime they’re looking for wards to do the same. “What we really need,” Other-Julia says one day two weeks later, a pencil stuck through her ponytail like it’s high school again, “is something that can both protect you and guide you so that you get to the right place, because this jumping around that you’re doing is ridiculously inefficient.” 

“Try doing it,” Quentin says dryly. 

They’re working out of Kady’s again, even though she’s still not back from… it was Seattle, but then something else cropped up in Chicago so now she’s there. But the penthouse is technically a safe house and they have permission to be there. Also, it has the Fillory clock now and a portal to Alice’s office at the Library, which is where she and Other-Alice convinced the Zeldas to put the mirror gateway between realities. Not to mention Marina’s library, which is magically eclectic enough that they just might find something relevant. 

All of the 40b crowd is living there right now, including Other-Eliot - Margo is in Quentin and Eliot’s guest room now, which makes sense because they’d half assumed it would be de facto her room anyway. Quentin told Eliot that he never wants to sleep there, but it’s not so bad to spend most of the day there when he thinks of it as commuting to the office, as it were. 

Speaking of offices, he and Eliot are going to have to get jobs eventually, but it’s probably a good thing they do not have jobs right now. 

Kady’s penthouse has the space, anyway, which makes it the best place to work out of. Currently, both Alices are working on the magic problem, Margo and Eliot are trying to figure out Fillory logistics, while Other-Eliot and Quentin are researching Niffin wards. Other-Julia and Other-23 are looking for ways to better direct the dreamwalking. 

“Why don’t we just reset all this shit?” Eliot says abruptly, and they all look over at him. 

“You know about the time stamp,” Other-Eliot says, looking more than a little uncomfortable. 

“Yeah, I do. Why don’t you just send your Q that?” 

“Wait, what time stamp?” Quentin asks, and Other-Eliot sighs. He tells them about his visit to Jane Chatwin in a strangely detached voice, how Jane had told him to let the dead stay dead and given her version of how the time loops began, which in Quentin’s opinion sounds like she deliberately phrased it to make Other-Eliot feel guilty. 

“Hey,” he interrupts. “I saw some of One myself, and Jane very much manipulated the situation.” 

“I didn’t expect anything less, Makepeace,” Other-Eliot says, and as ever Quentin has to refrain from rolling his eyes. Other-Eliot and Other-Julia have taken to calling him that - her idea - when they have to address him, which is vaguely irritating but also just a little funny. “Hard to take her seriously with all that hypocrisy going, but anyway. I swiped these time stamps off of her, used most of them in failed attempts to save Fen and Hoberman, but I kept one. Wrote a letter for my Q, but Alice and I decided it was best to save that for a final option.” 

“Why though?” Margo asks. “You didn’t know what the stuff you’d already done caused yet. El’s got a point, Mirror-El. It just might work.” 

“No, it won’t,” Other-Alice says. Quentin hasn’t talked to her directly outside of work; she avoids him and he lets her, not wanting to push the issue. Now she straightens in her seat, fixing her glasses before she keeps talking. “We can’t introduce more time magic now, It wasn’t a bad fallback before if we could figure out what to tell Q that saved him but still took out the Monster Twins and Everett, but it’s too late.” 

“OK, why?” Other-23 asks. 

“Oh fuck, the split,” Quentin guesses, and both Alices nod, which is a little freaky.

“Yeah,” Alice says. “The split happened after Quentin cast in the Seam, we think right at the moment that decided one version lived and one didn’t. Probability magic, time magic, dimensional magic, Everett had some of all of that in him. He was dead by then so it was in the blast. Not to mention mending, like all repair magics whether it’s healing or mending disciplines, has an element of time magic in it. Very limited, because what it’s doing is reminding the cells or molecules of previous states, but it’s present. We have no idea what adding more time magic would do now, especially since it would specifically affect the divergence point.” 

“That’s part of our problem,” Other-Alice continues. “The surges are continuing on both sides, and now Fillory 40b has… magic storms. At least that’s what we’re calling them, because ball lightning raining down on places is definitely magical and it’s tied to the surges. One of them happens every time we can track a surge - but in Earth 40a, not 40b. Which suggests all four worlds are interlinked, probably because Fillory is where Everett was storing his magic. We need something that -” 

Other-Alice stops talking abruptly as a flash of silver light fills the room, blinding them all for a moment. Blinking to clear his vision, Quentin is somehow not that surprised to find Julia - his Julia, silver-eyed demigoddess Julia - standing in the middle of the room.

“What the fuck,” Other-Julia says, dropping her book. “You never said other-me got her goddess powers back.” 

Julia looks at her counterpart, a faint amused smile on her face. “I’m not. I’m a demigoddess, which you can pull off too, although…” She tilts her head, as if listening to something only she can hear. “I wouldn’t petition Lady Hecate. You’ll want a different goddess, but I can’t tell which. It’ll come to you, if your experience is anything like mine.”

“Speaking of Hecate, Jules, I thought she had you for a year and a day?” Quentin asks. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you -” 

“Lady Hecate sent me,” Julia cuts him off, shaking her head. “I’m here to cut through some of the red tape for you, because we are almost out of time. The surges have gotten less dangerous, but that is deceptive. The storms in one of the Fillorys are bleeding off some of the energy, but not where it’s needed so it’s no help.” 

“Deceptive how?” Margo demands. 

“Deceptive as in, you have six weeks to fix it or the unstable magic will tear all four worlds apart,” Julia says, and her words leave them all gaping. 

“Six weeks? What the fuck?” Eliot snaps. “And you couldn’t tell us sooner?”

“No, they wouldn’t have let her,” Other-Julia says. “Gods are like that. Shit, I knew something was coming but we all thought when the surges seemed to get weaker that we were wrong, that it settled itself after all. Damn it. So what do we do?” 

Julia smiles. “Well,  _ you  _ need to stop working on the dreamscape. The Alices each have a spell - you’re on the right track,” she says, turning to them. “Combining that major mending and the world creation spell are what you need to do, but have my counterpart do it. Meta-comp, that’s what we do. Once you’re ready, you need people casting in all four worlds, and they need to be the same people in the same places. From the right realities, because when the spell is done, the way back will be closed.”

“So I’ll go back to Fillory, take someone with me, we’ll send word to other-me, make sure the same someone’s there with her, and go from there,” Margo says, and Julia nods. But there’s something… 

“What’s the catch?” Quentin asks. Julia turns to him with a wry smile. 

“Your spell started this. One of the casters has to be you.” 

“But you just said…” Quentin trails off. “Fuck. We’ve gotta get Casper back,” he says, forgetting that they try not to call his counterpart that in front of the 40b people. “We’ve gotta get the spell together, any components it needs, and get Casper back, and functional enough to cast, in six weeks.” 

He doesn’t need Julia’s nod to know that he’s right, or that they are in a whole lot of trouble. What was it Eliot said, after the first dreamwalking attempt? _ “One more job, right? Of course it was going to be a big one, how the fuck did I ever think otherwise.” _

Eliot had been right, of course. And here they are, with the stakes two whole worlds in fucking double. Jesus Christ, how do they keep getting into these things? Except, of course, this one’s on Quentin himself, isn’t it? 

Well. That just means he has to make sure they fix it. Somehow.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ \- share her shade.  _

_ The three of them are connected, Quentin can feel that, the bond between them almost like stories of soulmates, as if burning up together made the three of them one being on some deep level. And the difference, the thing that makes him not a Niffin, is that he still has his shade.  _

_ If he can just… _

_ He lashes out a tendril of his own, golden fire wrapping around the blue outline of his Niffin counterpart, and Quentin can feel it. He could invade Niffin Quentin’s mind instead now, he could take the knowledge of every different memory, could do exactly what had been done to him.  _

_ But he doesn’t. He pushes instead. Pushes two different lifetimes and what it is to truly  _ **_feel_ ** _ those.  _

_ Alice calming him down in the Drowned Garden with hands gentle like they hadn’t been in so long, the way she’d smiled at him on the steps that last day.  _

_ Julia grinning when he called her the Indestructress, their desperate hug when they’d first seen each other after the memory wipe. _

_ Margo crowning him with teasing sincerity and a grin, the way she’d told him everything was going to be all right even though she had every right to be furious with him.  _

_ Eliot, a lifetime together full of more memories than Quentin could describe. Eliot hugging him when they’d thought he was dead, Eliot in the park that day, alive after all.  _

_ But also - Alice screaming at the doorway to the Seam. Julia’s tears and Margo’s stunned face, the fathomless grief in Eliot’s eyes, all lit by a bonfire that Quentin can hear crackling when he speaks here in the magic. _

_ This is me, this is what you were, what you’re  _ **_supposed_ ** _ to be, he thinks, he shoves this into Niffin Quentin and the backlash hits Niffin Eliot and Niffin Margo, the shock of  _ **_feeling_ ** _ for the first time in so long loosening their grip.  _

_ And Quentin is off like a shot, blazing like a comet as he flees - _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Save the nerd, save your corner of the multiverse!
> 
> I'm not saying the Dark King concept didn't have potential, even if the whole thing felt like a Prince Caspian knockoff. That was on brand, it's cool. I just don't have time for it - and no interest in further problems caused by Chatwins either. And I really, really want Plover dead.
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	5. Two Ghosts In One Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the gang has a plan, and Quentin finally meets his ghostly counterpart. 
> 
> And then things take a turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter finds you all well! 
> 
> I'm pretty sure the only warning for this chapter is some discussion of Quentin's suicidal tendencies and a reference to his suicide in 4.13. If I missed anything, let me know. 
> 
> I've really been looking forward to sharing this chapter and the next one with you! (Though I'm fairly sure you're gonna yell at me after this one.)
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers (especially Maii) and to all of you for reading!

_ \- at top speed. It won’t last forever, all he did was project his feelings, they’ll be on him again. So he needs to get to the one place he knows is safe, he needs to make contact with his counterpart.  _

_ Some part of him, of what he is now, knows his own magic, knows the feel of his own magic in a living body. And so when he picks it up, a flash of warm brown light and the flavor of honey, it doesn’t occur to him that the light is flickering, like it’s not yet sure of itself. Like it’s not yet  _ **_settled_ ** _. _

_ It doesn’t occur to him because he’s only alive in one timeline, isn’t he? So there’s nothing else it could be, nowhere else to go, it has to be the counterpart he saw before, the one with the red hair - _

_ He falls and falls, and then something catches him, his own living self like a black hole pulling him in and he - _

_ Stands up, blinking around at his own backyard, the tire swing swaying gently in a slight breeze. This is not the mental safe space he would have expected, and how is it that he’s solid again?  _

_ “Uh, what the fuck?”  _

_ He turns to find himself sitting on the backdoor steps, but it’s not, it can’t be. He’s too young, his hair the wrong color (natural color) and not quite the right length, and Quentin hasn’t worn that soft blue shirt in years. And above all he is  _ **_too young_ ** _. It’s in his eyes, this version of himself hasn’t seen half the things Quentin has seen, this isn’t right, this can’t be right. _

_ That’s when Quentin remembers something he saw during his attempts to contact his friends - the flash of himself and Alice at South, after the timeshare spell like he remembers in her black dress and his blue jacket. But next to them like a splitscreen, sitting next to each other with stunned faces, in their Brakebills South uniforms.  _

_ Oh no, what did they do? And where is he? _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

“OK, if we only have six weeks, I think we need to scrap the crystal plan,” Alice says into the silence after Quentin’s spoken realization, which had been followed almost immediately by Julia vanishing the way she’d come. “We were going to get ghost-Q back and then build his body, but we don’t have time for that. We have to build him his new body first, then go get him.” 

“OK, how exactly do I do that?” Quentin asks, focusing on the practical. He can’t afford to let guilt eat him up like he has before - there’s no time. Also, the truth remains, even with this consequence, that there had been  _ no other option _ but to cast. “I thought we were going to contact him through me, then summon him?” 

“We won’t have time for that now,” Other-Alice says, raking a hand through her hair. He feels bad for her, suddenly, he can see she’s nearly as exhausted as Other-Eliot is, and there’s that now-familiar squirm of survivor’s guilt. “You’ll have to channel him into you, and then we’ll pull him out.” 

“Wait, though, Quentin’s not a medium,” Alice says. “Can he actually -” 

“I think he can,” Other-Alice cuts her off. “He’s like a unidirectional medium, can only contact his other self but it’s -”

“- our best chance, fine, but I don’t want to hurt -” 

“It won’t hurt him -” 

“Hey! Quinns!” Margo calls over the two Alices as they go back and forth like a really weird sort of verbal tennis. “Short version. What do you want Q to do, and is it gonna hurt him?”

“Short version, when he makes contact, he actually pulls Casper into himself - Casper will have to cooperate - and they’ll both be in Q’s body when he wakes up. We can use the summoning spell to draw him out from Quentin and into his new body,” Alice says. 

“Wait, how do I draw him into me?” Quentin asks. 

“We have a book with an explanation of the process, it’s not hard,” Other-Alice says, her eyes focusing on a point somewhere over his shoulder. 

“OK, this sounds a lot like Quentin letting his ghost counterpart possess him,” Eliot says, an edge in his voice that makes Quentin go over to him, resting a hand on his arm. They don’t need to turn this into a fight. Eliot relaxes a little, but continues, “I don’t see how that’s a good thing.” 

“No, it’s not like that,” Other-23 says, and they all look at him in surprise. He makes a face. “Look, there’s overlap with shit like this. Brakebills doesn’t have a Necromancer House, there was a medium who had the room next to mine with the psychics. Channeling lets a ghost do things, like talk to loved ones or write a letter, but only if the necromancer lets them. Final control is with the living person doing the channeling.” 

“And it would only be for a few minutes, just long enough to summon our Quentin out of your Quentin’s body,” Other-Alice adds. 

“You want to do it, don’t you?” Eliot asks Quentin, who shrugs. What he  _ wants  _ is for this to be over, and for this to be over...

“Not exactly, but I want this done. It’ll take a couple weeks just to build the body, and I can use that time to do research on more safeguards. But it’s probably our best bet at this point.” 

And so it’s agreed that Quentin will find his ghost counterpart, save him from the Niffins, and bring him back personally. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little nervous about the idea of carrying another version of himself in his body, however briefly, but he figures that he was probably already kind of doing that, as he tells Eliot when they leave to go back to Brooklyn. Margo, maybe sensing that the tension isn’t all the way gone, waves them off and says she’ll crash at the penthouse tonight because she wants to check in with Fen, and the clock is at the penthouse.

“I mean, the whole connection thing makes the most sense if you figure there’s a fragment of him in me and probably one of me in him.” 

“So, like the soul grain in the bottle?” Eliot asks as he heads for the kitchen, and Quentin gets the sense that something is going to bear the brunt of Eliot’s brooding from the business end of a chopping knife. 

“Something like that,” Quentin says, settling at the kitchen table. “Am I allowed to help?” he asks. 

“No, you’ll jinx it just by touching it.” 

“I am not entirely incompetent in the kitchen, I thought we established this,” Quentin says dryly.

“I once caught you burning water,” Eliot replies, and yep, there are the unfortunate vegetables getting chopped.

“That was because you came wandering in with one of those borderline-indecent robes, and I got distracted. Should you really be chopping when you’re still ticked off, El?” 

“I’m probably going to be ticked off for the next little while, so if you want to eat tonight -” 

“Then let’s have it out!” Quentin says, and Eliot slams the knife down, turning to face him. 

“You’re letting someone else into your body, Quentin!” 

“I’m letting another me in, for a few minutes! I’m going to be careful!” 

“Will you?” Eliot snaps, and now Quentin is angry too, standing up fast enough that he knocks his chair over. 

“When are you going to trust me? I told you, I want to be done with this! And now we only have six weeks, and goddamn it, El, I started this, so yes, I am serious about fixing it, but can you blame me? I basically fucking kickstarted an apocalypse!” And now that the words are out, there’s the guilt. He knows there was no other way, he does, but still… Would Everett with the Monster really have been as bad as ‘the world will end in six weeks’?

Eliot crosses the space between them in two steps, grabbing Quentin’s upper arms. “This is not your fault, do not go down that road again, that is how we got in the Monster mess in the first place! You decided losing magic was all on you, so you had to be the one who paid for it! Except if something happens to you it’s not just you -” 

“Eliot, nothing is going to happen to me,” Quentin says, anger fading into worry. “And I volunteered to stay because someone needed to if we were gonna get in there, and I couldn’t ask someone else to do it.” 

“Bullshit,” Eliot says flatly, and before Quentin can reply he continues, “No, Quentin. I know you. And yeah, I’m sure that was part of your reasoning, but can you really stand there and tell me that was all of it? That you weren’t also thinking you deserved it somehow, or that it was you repaying a debt?”

“I -” Quentin stops, looks away. He can’t lie, not about this, not now. “I thought - I had less to lose than the rest of you, if it was me,” he admits finally. “But this isn’t like that, I swear. Eliot. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in this lifetime. But I can feel it, OK. I told you but I’m not sure you - I can  _ feel him _ . I can feel how lost he is, how alone he feels. And I’ve been there, I can’t leave him like that. I have to do this because there’s no other option that we  _ know  _ can work. But I really think it’ll be safe. Just one more dream thing, and then that’ll be it, El.”

He means it, but he’s not sure if Eliot believes him.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ Dear God, he’s so young. Physically maybe not so much. First year wasn’t even five years ago. But in every way that matters… Quentin stares at this younger self and he doesn’t know what to do.  _

_ “What are you, the Ghost of Christmas Future? I don’t even like Dickens,” the younger Quentin says, crossing his arms uncomfortably over his chest as he stares. “Also, why do you look like a Targaryen with freaky eyes?”  _

_ What? Quentin tugs at his hair and finds that it’s white. He doesn’t know what color his eyes are and he doesn’t ask, but he thinks of Niffin Alice’s eyes glowing blue and how he’d been made of gold fire, so he can guess they look gold.  _

_ Weird.  _

_ “Ghost of Timelines Past,” he says absently, because what else is there to say? _

_ “Timelines? What are you talking about?”  _

_ Quentin has an idea. A terrible, horrible idea, but - why should Jane and Fogg be the only ones to play this game? He can’t do too much, things are already different if what he suspects is true, but a little nudge… Why not? _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

Eliot knows he might not be being entirely reasonable. The truth is, there’s no particular reason to think that Quentin is in any real danger, doing this. It’s just - he doesn’t like it. And no, it’s not just the fact that whatever 23 and Alice of 40b claim, this channeling bullshit sounds too much like a voluntary kind of possession for comfort. That doesn’t help in the least, of course. That in itself makes Eliot’s skin crawl, makes him feel like something’s creeping under his skin again. 

But it isn’t just that. 

“Quentin, Casper’s basically a Niffin with a shade, right? You do remember that carrying Niffin Alice in your tattoo almost killed you? And that’s assuming the Niffin trio doesn’t try to follow you.”

“The wards will prevent the Niffins following. That part I’m sure of, between a Julia and two Alices I’m pretty secure on that,” Quentin says, his hands coming to rest lightly on Eliot’s hips. Eliot is aware he’s still gripping Quentin’s arms and while he doesn’t let go, he tries to loosen his hold a little.

“OK, fine, I’ll concede that I’m sure they did their best with that and their best is a lot.” Like a Hermione Granger triple-shot, Margo said the other day, observing the two Alices and Other-Julia working together on something. “But you carrying Casper inside you… I don’t like it, Q.” 

“Honestly, I’m not crazy about it myself, El. But it’s only for a couple minutes, just long enough for whoever does the summoning to do it, and then we’ll be in our own bodies and it’ll be over.” Quentin tips his head up, studying Eliot’s face, and then he smiles, a little sadly. “It’s a much more calculated risk than I usually end up taking, isn’t that a good sign at least?” 

“Well, it’s something,” Eliot says. “It’s not enough, Q. Not enough to make me feel better about this.” 

“Do you want me to find another way? Because I’ll talk to them if you really -” 

“No,” Eliot says, and God, he hates this. “No, we’re pressed for time now. But this has to be it, all right? Look, I don’t think I ever told you, but Margo once told me, ‘when the time comes to be brave or be smart, you know what to choose’. You, on the other hand, have a tendency to be brave over smart, so can you really tell me, Q, that this isn’t one of those times?” 

Quentin hesitates over the answer, which in a way is actually a relief, because Eliot can all but see the wheels turning behind those brown eyes, watches the half-expressions cross Quentin’s face one after the other. He’s  _ thinking  _ about it, which means that he’s not just going to rush in now. “I think… that you - and Margo - would probably disagree, but when I do the things I do, it’s - in the moment I’m thinking less about being the hero and more about this is what feels necessary. It doesn’t feel reckless when it’s happening. This is different, I have time to think about it and under the circumstances -” 

“It’s not that different,” Eliot cuts him off. “You had time to think with Blackspire too. And what the hell did you mean before, you thought you had less to lose?” 

Quentin looks at him like he’s being willfully clueless, which kind of makes Eliot want to shake him, but he doesn’t. He just waits, and Quentin sighs. “I mean - Alice had her plans, Jules was a goddess, you and Margo had Fillory, Kady and 23 aren’t, aren’t really people I could tag in with, so… I didn’t have anything… I had less to leave and I figured you guys didn’t need -” 

Now Eliot does shake him. Just a little, and only gently, but enough to get Quentin to stop talking and blink up at Eliot instead, startled. “Tell me you know that’s bullshit,” Eliot says, voice low and tense, controlled because it’s that or yell. 

“Yeah - Christ, El. Yeah, I know. Looking back, that was probably the start of the spiral that almost killed me and did kill Casper. That’s why I’m trying to tell you, this is different. I know it probably doesn’t look it to you, but it is. I know that because I’m the one in my head. I am approaching this as carefully as I can, I swear. The last thing I want is to get myself in serious danger again.”

And Eliot believes him, he does, it’s just that… It’s just that they literally had the Ghost Of Who You Could Be living in their apartment until about a week ago when the living quarters shuffle happened and Margo ended up living with them and Other-Eliot went back to the penthouse. Eliot can guess why - in his counterpart’s shoes he couldn’t live with them for any length of time either. 

It’s just that Eliot has always known, in an abstract sense, what losing Quentin would do to him. But to see it, to see this other version of himself who hasn’t bothered to lose the beard or the long hair even if he’s making an effort to keep both neat, who dresses in almost unrelieved black (and whatever isn’t black is still the darkest shades of colors). Whose eyes are bleak and haunted even when he’s trying to be more cheerful. To actually  _ see  _ what he’d be if he lost Q, it’s… 

It’s why he wants to help. But it’s making his protective tendencies even worse.

“I won’t be able to calm down till this fucking mess is over,” Eliot admits finally, pulling Quentin against him and hiding his face in his hair. “I’m going to help you with the defenses research, all right?” Maybe it will help, will chase away this unreasonable sense of  _ something is going to go wrong _ that he can’t seem to shake.

“OK,” Quentin says, his agreement muffled where his face is pressed into Eliot’s shirt. “That seems fair.” 

“And after this, I’m disconnecting the fucking phones for a week.” 

“We don’t have a landline.” 

“You’re going to come at me with semantics now, Coldwater?” Eliot asks, but he feels a little better for the familiarity of it. He just hopes it lasts, just hopes that his bad feeling is the result of too much worry and nothing else.

“You’re paranoid, and no fucking wonder with Mirror Eliot wandering around like he’s half a ghost himself,” Margo says when Eliot finally manages to find the words to talk to her about this. They’re in a section of the city that  _ looks  _ like hipster central - and  _ is _ , in a lot of ways, but also contains several shops that are actually primarily for the magically inclined.

With Kady still off on the West Coast somewhere, Eliot and Margo have easily the best local connections with regard to magical contacts or places to buy supplies for spells. Alice has plenty, but not local, and 23 has some too but same problem as Alice. (From what Eliot can gather, the Pennys were like him; magic was too intrusive not to have  _ some  _ grounding before ever finding out there was a Brakebills.)

Which is how Eliot and Margo ended up on shopping duty. Eliot’s counterpart is busy working on building his Quentin a body, and Margo’s is, as far as they know, still in her Fillory. The body-making project is over in 40b, because otherwise Casper won’t ‘belong’ to his own reality properly or something like that.

“I can’t exactly blame him for being a wreck, Margo,” Eliot says mildly. 

“I didn’t say he should be blamed for it, just that looking at him, no wonder you can’t help worrying.” Margo examines the herb mixes on display, looking at the list Other-Julia gave them before they left. “No, no, ha - got it,” she mutters, then looks back over at Eliot. “Also, it’s Quentin, and his sense of self-preservation needs work, to put it mildly. I thought he was doing better with that though? After the leg thing.” 

“He is, or he says he is and I believe him - this is the first time it’s really been tested,” Eliot says. “What kind of focusing crystals does Other-Julia want again?” 

“Calcite,” Margo answers, and Eliot nods, turning to look through a bin of calcite stones even as Margo asks, “So, what, you think he won’t mean it in the crunch?” 

“I think his instincts are to dive in headfirst and in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to do anything but go with instinct,” Eliot corrects. “But, as you pointed out, all I’m doing is making myself paranoid. So what about you? You blasted the creeper, what now?” he asks, being vague about her killing their reality’s Plover last week because they are, after all, in public.

“Not sure yet. Fen and I are discussing it - there’s not much anyone can do until the zones are put right, and that depends on if our Fillory matches the other one or not, you know? Because if the jump holds, then it’s kind of open season on the top job,” Margo says. “I want it back, obviously, but… I did give it up. I’m not sure what I’d prefer, at this point. Actually, from what Other-Wicker said, if it does match up, we might all get a second shot. Apparently the four of us that fought the Beast have King Arthur-type stories now.” 

Eliot makes a face. “Yes, my counterpart mentioned a play?” 

“Nah, that was bullshit propaganda, and he was doing it because there’s, like, folk legends. So I guess we’ll see, you know? Can’t do shit till this spell’s done with, and we can’t do that till Casper’s back. Which is gonna be a mess and a half… and brings us right back to your boy, huh?” 

“All I wanted was to retire, Bambi,” Eliot laments, and if his mournful tone is overdramatic because the act will cheer them both up, it’s still true.

“And be sickeningly domestic with your nerd?” Margo says over her shoulder as the cashier rings up their purchases.

“My way of being domestic could never be  _ sickening _ ,” Eliot says. 

“Hey,” Margo says as they leave the store, blinking in the sunlight after the dimness inside. “You’re gonna get your chance. You deserve it - hell, you both do. And it may not be my speed, but I figure my job will be to crash in often enough you’re never bored. What do you think?” 

Eliot laughs, wrapping an arm around Margo’s shoulders and kissing her temple. “I think that sounds amazing. We just have to get there.” 

“We will,” Margo says, with iron certainty. Eliot just hopes she’s right.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ He’s strange, this white-haired, golden-eyed other self. Quentin doesn’t remember exactly how he got hurt, except that he’s pretty sure Eliot’s boyfriend Mike was there when it happened. But this has to be an injury-induced hallucination, right? It can’t be real. _

_ Or, there was that weirdness at South. Alice’s memory gap, his own memory of being with a different Alice, lighter-haired and out of uniform. How he’d also been out of uniform. _

_ “You know what happened at South, don’t you? Why Alice and I have such weird memories. We thought it was Mayakovsky, that’s when we figured out that his fox thing had been fucking with us the whole time…”  _

_ “Wait, are you two not dating?” White-Hair asks, and even though they’re the same person, Quentin can’t read his expression. _

_ “... No? No, we figured out that the fox thing made us do stuff we weren’t ready for and… it’s weird now.” Wouldn’t a figment of his imagination know that? What is going on? _

_ “Oh boy. Well, OK, that’s already different, maybe my idea won’t work as well as I thought,” White-Hair says, more to himself than to Quentin.  _

_ “What idea?”  _

_ But he doesn’t get an answer. Just another question.  _

_ “Tell me, how did you get here? I need to figure out where you are before I can figure out what to say next.” _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Being back in Kady’s penthouse is somehow even worse in his own reality. But he and Alice had gone to consult Alex again about the best spell to build Quentin a new body. She’d told them about a spell that combines aspects of the bone-knitting spell Alice had tried to use for Penny and a golem spell. The idea is that mostly the body is created new, built up cell by cell, but with a tiny focus like a voodoo doll made of living clay, mixed with the blood, skin, and/or hair of the person you’re bringing back. The focus makes the spell more solid, drawing on the power of living clay and the bits of the person mixed in.

Alex’s advice had been to try and find whatever they could of their Quentin to mix in with the clay for the focus. Other-Quentin’s blood and hair is good and necessary because they need as much genetic material as possible, but Alex says it will help if they have something, anything left by their Q. They also need to build him in this timeline, so he’ll belong to it more properly.

And she’s the expert, so Eliot and Alice go to pull down the box of Quentin’s things from the little crawlspace attic at Kady’s. Alice had some herself that Julia brought her, but they’re starting here to avoid her mother if at all possible. 

So they take the box out and carefully unfold clothes, looking for stray hairs mostly. They find three, carefully plucked from cloth and slipped into a plastic bag like some roleplay of CSI. Eliot finds his hands lingering on denim and cotton and flannel, and makes himself stop, packing the clothes away again meticulously. He can still catch stray whiffs of the detergent everyone in the penthouse uses, of that fake woodsy scent of the three-in-one shower gel Quentin always used to use. 

(Other-Quentin, he remembers from the day he broke down, doesn’t smell like that, as if his Eliot talked him into actually separating his hair and body soap products, and the detergent was different too.)

Eliot is trying to shake these thoughts when the clock opens, and he turns in time to see Margo come out, jumping when she sees Eliot and Alice. “Shit, you surprised me,” she says. “I thought you guys would be a timeline over.” 

“Is that a problem?” Eliot asks, and there’s a sharp note to his question that he doesn’t bother to hide. Margo’s refusal to help seems to hurt all the more now that over in 40a Other-Margo is all in on helping. He just doesn’t understand why his Margo hasn’t been the same. He also doesn’t understand… she’s in back in Earth clothes and she looks like herself but there’s something off, and he’s not sure…

“You only have one of your axes,” Alice says, because without being distracted by her emotions she caught up faster. 

“Yeah, I know,” Margo says. “I… traded one. For this.” She reaches into the little pouch at her belt and pulls out a vial of blood. “Fucking witch drives a hard bargain, but I figure I still have an axe and I have what I came for, win-win for me.”

“What is that?” Alice asks. 

“Remember when Quentin traded blood to a witch to save us? Only you’d already done that with god jizz power so he didn’t need her help? She wouldn’t give it back, but for another trade she would. Here it is,” Margo says, wiggling the vial a bit. “I thought - if you guys are seriously onto a way to really bring him back, it might come in handy.” 

“Margo…” Eliot begins, but she turns back to him then, a strange smile on her face that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

“Can we talk?” she asks. 

“Right, uh, I’m going to take these and go back over,” Alice says quickly, and she’s through the door that portals to her Library office before either of them can say anything. Eliot would laugh if he didn’t feel so uncertain. 

“Let’s go outside,” he says, leading the way out to the terrace. And so they do, both of them leaning on the rail and looking out at the city below. Eliot is thinking how only the knowing it’s his reality separates this from when he’s in the same place one timeline over when Margo speaks. 

“So. Look, I… might have fucked this one up, Eliot.” 

He can feel her eyes on him, but still, Eliot waits a moment before he turns back to her. “You weren’t wrong about the time magic - it would have fucked up more than we knew,” he admits. “But there was no way to know that at the time. Why were Josh and Fen worth more -” He breaks off, because that sounds almost like he thinks they didn’t deserve saving. And that isn’t true; Eliot cares about Fen and doesn’t have anything in particular against Hoberman at this point, especially if he makes Margo happy. 

“Saving them… I know what I said, I know I tried to tell you there was no point, but, fuck. How could I think there was a point, when the last person I tried to save ended up dying to save me? But it did work, and I just didn’t understand why them and not Quentin, how you could say they were different.” 

Margo sighs. “It was bullshit. Well, sort of. We would have had to be a  _ lot  _ more careful because shit was happening all at once back there. No room for the same trial and error, and that’s it really,” she says. “I didn’t think we could pull it off. It was too close. I thought time magic would blow up in our faces and maybe mean we didn’t save you. And I thought if you tried to resurrect him you’d die doing it. I thought if I refused to help you, you’d back off.” 

Eliot stares at her. “Wait. You tried to talk me out of saving Quentin to  _ protect  _ me? Margo, don’t you think I’d be a hell of a lot better off with him back?”

“If you survived getting him! You barely survived the consequences of saving him from Blackspire! I couldn’t - look. I cared about him too. I  _ care _ , if we do get him back. But he’s already gone. Losing him sucked but it’s a loss I can cope with. You… I barely got through without you last time, El. I can’t do that again. I was willing to keep things as they were if it meant you didn’t get yourself killed trying to undo it.” 

“You could. Do that, I mean,” Eliot says with a quiet certainty, and when Margo opens her mouth to argue he shakes his head, taking her hands. “No. While I was gone you… I don’t know what it is you found, exactly, but there’s something new to you now, Bambi. Some kind of assurance, something - maybe you found it ruling solo, or in the desert, I don’t know. But you could. And I could. I could move on without him, and if I lost you I could make myself survive it. With enough time, I’d manage. It’d be more and more hell piled on, but I could. And if I can, I know you can.” 

“But I don’t want to,” Margo says. “Life’s shitty without you, Eliot. And now I’ve all but lost you anyway, haven’t I?” 

“No,” Eliot says. “That’s my point. What I found out, while I was gone, while I was trapped in my head? There’s a few things, but the big one is - I don’t want to be alone. I could do it, but I’d rather fight not to be. I love you, and I love Quentin, and I’m ready to be brave enough to fight for that. Even if it means fucking with death. And for you and me it means telling you I don’t need that kind of protection, but I’ve missed you. And I need you with me, Bambi.”

“I’m here,” Margo says. “And I’m not going anywhere. Stupid strategy, thinking cutting you off would make you stop. I should have known, if I want you safe I need to be there to work on that. And I’d like to have him back too - God knows shit feels even more fucked without him. So I need to be in on it.”

Eliot, to his own surprise, finds himself laughing as he folds his arms around her in a tight hug. “Yeah, you do. Margo the Destroyer, wrecking the shit out of anyone who dares to hurt her or her people.” 

“Damn straight,” Margo says, her voice a little muffled against his chest. “So we’re gonna do this shit, get you your boy back and fix all the weird timeline shit. And then… Well, I don’t fucking know but we’ll figure it out?” 

“You don’t have a kingdom to get back to?” Eliot asks, resting his chin on the top of Margo’s head. 

“Nah, Fen and I are working a joint custody thing and part of that is her holding the fort right now with Josh for magic-related backup. And food.”

“Important things both,” Eliot agrees, and in New York spring sunlight, holding onto his Bambi again, he… can’t exactly say he feels  _ happy _ . Not yet, not with the soul bottle still pulsing and warm in his pocket, still there. But he feels  _ better _ . He feels grounded again, in a way he hasn’t since before the Monster. He feels so much less lost.

And that is a gift in itself.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ “There are forty of these loops?” Quentin asks, horrified. “And why can’t you tell me more than what you just did?”  _

_ White-Hair shrugs. “Forty-one, with you. Alice and I created you by mistake, unless I’m wrong. Sorry. But I can’t say much because you’re already on a different path than me. What I know is that Eliza is Jane Chatwin, she’s been resetting the timeline every time we die, and Fogg knows all about it. I also know that Mike’s a bad guy, he’s being possessed by the Beast, you need to make up with Julia and try to get her away from the hedges - though she might have met Kady by now, Kady should come too - and you should look into making a spell called the Rhinemann Ultra into a cooperative cast. Just in case.”  _

_ “Only half of that makes any sense!” Quentin snaps, throwing up his hands in frustration. “And what happened to you?”  _

_ “A lot of shit that ended in me killing myself, if you really want to know. And, yeah, we don’t always mind the idea of being dead in theory, but… it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’d kind of like it if some timeline, somewhere, actually ended up a real win. Oh, on that note, tell Penny to be nice to the river guy, if it comes up.”  _

_ “What?” Quentin says, trying not to screech. “Can you be more cryptic!” _

_ “I’m telling you, I don’t know how much of what I remember will hold! These are the only things I can think of that if they still pop up you can actually do something about,” White-Hair says, “and I’m beginning to wonder if this is why Fogg kept his mouth shut like an asshole.” _

_ Quentin, about to yell again, has a different, awful thought. “Wait, if you - if we - we don’t  _ **_want_ ** _ to kill ourself, that’s why we were back in Midtown again. If you did, the magic was supposed to fix that. Did he lie about that?” _

_ White-Hair blinks. “I… have no idea. Really. I never questioned it, so I can’t answer that.”  _

_ Quentin is about to say something else, but then a sudden pain jabs through his head. He yelps, pressing his hands to his temples and he thinks he hears voices, thinks he almost sees bright light in his eyes, thinks someone is telling him he needs to wake up and smoothing back his hair with a gentle hand -  _

_ His last thought is that he shouldn’t be able to pass out in a hallucination. _

_ Meanwhile, the Quentin of 40b catches his younger self and lowers him to the grass, remembering how carrying Niffin Alice had almost killed him and wondering what he might be accidentally doing to his counterpart.  _

_ The problem is, when he tries to will himself away, it doesn’t work. He’s stuck without help, and where would that come from? _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

It takes three weeks for Casper’s new body to be built. Three, out of the six they have. Other-Julia and Alice have been working on reconfiguring the world creation spell and a few major mending spells usually used in the wake of natural disasters. They ask Quentin to check in occasionally, because even if his thing is minor mendings, it’s in the same family of magic, or so Other-Julia says. Alice says menders often find building magics to be easy too, because of the same thing. Quentin takes their word for it, and does what they tell him, mostly. 

The rest of the time he spends reading up on channeling, and he thinks he’s got the hang of it now. Mediums, like Other-23 said, are a psychic type of necromancer, and as a physical kid that would usually be magic he’d find almost impossible, but the… unique circumstances here change that.

Quentin knows in a sort of abstract way that the body is being made one reality over in 40b’s penthouse, but it doesn’t seem exactly real until he comes over to  _ their  _ penthouse on the appointed day to find two air mattresses laid out on the floor of the little upper-level library. One of them is empty, and the other one… 

“He’s already breathing?” he asks the trio of 40b people - Eliot, Alice, and Margo - who are up there, and then he could kick himself. “Uh, sorry, I just don’t exactly know how… this works.” Also, breathing or not, it is more than a little unnerving to see a body that looks like him laid out almost like he’s in a coffin, quiet and still with his hands folded on his stomach. Although he doesn’t think anyone would be buried in worn-soft blue jeans and a green sweater, which are the clothes they put Casper’s body in. That helps, somewhat.

Still, he has a feeling that funeral vibe is why both Other-Eliot and Other-Alice don’t seem inclined to look too hard at the body he knows they did most of the spellwork to make. Well, them and Other-Margo but if she’s having trouble she’s not letting him see it. Quentin wonders who made Casper’s hair longer, like it had been on the Key Quest - he can probably guess, though. 

“We put the soul grain inside him,” Other-Alice says, voice clipped. “It was enough to power a golem but not enough for this. Still, it’s enough to make him breathe, and it will help draw the rest of him out of you and into his new body.” 

“Oh. So… I’ve been using the soul bottle to help make sure I get the right other-me, how… I could hold his hand?” Quentin suggests. That will have the bonus effect of having to move his hands, and it also makes sense. There was a section in the book he’d read on channeling, because it can be used to connect with coma patients as well as with the dead, that said when used with living people direct contact helps. 

(Quentin has tried very, very hard not to wonder if some mediums used corpses to channel the spirit of the dead person in question. He  _ really  _ does not want to know.)

Eliot was behind him when he came up, and Quentin realizes suddenly he’s too quiet. He looks over to find Eliot still standing on the top step, one hand white-knuckled on the rail as he stares at Casper’s body. “El? Help me out with the wards?” They’ll be more powerful done cooperatively, and it soothes Quentin’s nerves to feel Eliot’s magic twining with his own. The taste of sweet spices is on his tongue even though they’re not touching, and it helps. Their magic  _ wants  _ to mix, it’s easy.

Then Quentin sits on the mattress, stretching out his legs real and prosthetic before he downs the potion. It’s not quite as fast as some of the others, leaving him blinking and drowsy, but not yet asleep. He grabs Eliot’s wrist. “Hey,” he says, quiet so no one else will hear. Especially not his partner’s bearded twin, currently standing as far away from them as he can go, staring out the window. “I love you, El, and I swear this is the last damn thing. OK?”

“You know, making a point of saying that right now isn’t exactly comforting, Q,” Eliot murmurs back. But in spite of his words, the tense edge to them, his hands are gentle as he helps Quentin lay back, when he brushes hair out of his eyes. And that’s the last thing Quentin remembers before - 

_ He shouldn’t be able to fit in here anymore. It’s the honeysuckle bush on the edge of his yard, back at the house in New Jersey that belongs to someone else now. The bush had a hollow inside, a little cave where he and Julia would tuck themselves away, picking honeysuckle flowers to get at the sweet drop of juice inside, or where they brought their Lunchables and Capri-Suns and pretended they were in Fillory, tucked away in a little den because they were Talking Animals, not Chatwins in this game. Julia always wanted to be a Bird, except Birds don’t live in little hollows, so she decided to be a Raccoon instead. Quentin was always a Cat, because he wanted a cat as a pet but his dad’s allergy meant he couldn’t.  _

_ Why is he here? But it doesn’t matter, he climbs out to find himself in his childhood backyard, but there’s -  _

_ Uh-oh. There’s a him lying on the grass, apparently asleep, and another sitting on the tire swing watching. The only good news, maybe, is that neither of them seem to be Niffins, though the shiny white hair of the Quentin on the swing is questionable and needs further investigation. Still, no sign of blue fire anywhere, not so much as a spark. Which means the wards around his sleeping body are useless, but that’s all right, they’re designed so that if they’re not necessary they don’t do anything else.  _

_ The sleeping Quentin doesn’t so much as stir when Quentin kneels down next to him trying to wake him up, and that’s when Quentin recognizes the length of his hair, the soft blue sweatshirt he’s wearing. A first-year him? What the fuck? _

_ And the other - the white-haired and golden-eyed Quentin in black? It only takes Quentin a moment to recognize the hoodie and jeans he wore that last day, the ones that were destroyed by the blast at the Seam. It takes only another moment to recognize the short haircut, the too-thin wrists and too-sharp cheekbones. “Hey, Casper,” he says, and his voice is steady, thank fuck. _

_ “Casper, huh? That’s fair, I’ve been thinking of you as Red.”  _

_ Quentin tugs on a bit of his hair, pulling it forward so he can see that, yep, it’s still the auburn color he dyed it that last night in San Diego. “I can see why. Who’s that?” he asks, gesturing at the younger, sleeping Quentin on the grass.  _

_ “Remember when Alice told us we needed to be careful with the timeshare spell? Well, she was right, as usual, and we weren’t careful enough. We made a Timeline 41. That’s him. Mike got to him. Not fatally, obviously, but he’s hurt. When he’s asleep in here he sort of stirs in his living world, which is how we know he’s not dead.” _

_ “But the Niffins…” Quentin trails off when Casper smiles, just a little.  _

_ “I got away. I guess time is different for me than for you?” _

_ “It’s been about five weeks or so, total, since I tried to reach you and got blocked by them. Do you… know who I am? What happened?” Quentin asks, unsure now how to proceed. Somehow it hadn’t really occurred to him that he’d need to talk to himself. _

_ “I know you’re a me who doesn’t die,” Casper says with a shrug. “And from the looks of you, you’re not from one of the loops I know. What happened to your leg, by the way?”  _

_ Quentin sighs, and tells him about the timeline split, about how he himself had survived the Seam but lost his leg instead. “We were just a thought away from sharing the same fate, and I don’t know, maybe the split wouldn’t have happened if we did share it, one way or the other.” _

_ “Well, at least I get to live somewhere,” Casper says, and when Quentin frowns at him, he shrugs, gesturing at the boy asleep on the grass. “You’re me. He’s who we used to be. You both get to live, and back in my half of 40, my friends are all OK. That’s… not the worst possible deal.” _

_ Quentin thinks of Other-Alice who can barely look at him, of Other-Julia’s desperately tight hug, of how Other-Eliot broke down in his arms because there was no one else to help, and he kind of wants to punch Casper. But he can remember when he thought the same way, so he doesn’t snap like he wants to. He won’t believe himself, the only way he’ll believe is to see. “Actually, I came here to get you - you get a second chance too.”  _

_ “What?” _

_ “I said, I came here for you. I didn’t tell you everything. I know about the timelines because we’ve all been working together.” Quentin weighs his options, and thinks of Penny after Alice died, telling Quentin that he needed his help. It had worked then, in a way it didn’t work when Julia tried the same thing. “I’ve seen your people, because we’ve got two things on our list. One of them is getting you back. The other is fixing magic, again.”  _

_ “I don’t understand. Penny said I did what I was supposed to, that they were better for it. And magic’s back too -”  _

_ “It’s fucked up. Because Everett collected it like he did, what we did gave it back but he twisted it up so it didn’t come back right.” As Quentin speaks, he realizes he believes it. This isn’t their fault, it’s easier to believe when he’s telling someone else even if that someone is also him. “But because we started the process, we have to finish it. So we’re bringing you back. We need you, because you and I both have to fix this.”  _

_ “Is that the only reason?” Casper asks with a faint, bleak smile.  _

_ “No, but you’ll only believe that from your people, and we both know that. You guys have a lot to talk about,” Quentin says, offering his hand. “So I’m telling you we have one last job to do, because that’s what you’ll believe from me.”  _

_ “You don’t want to take me with you. I’m pretty sure my being stuck in his head is hurting him,” Casper says, pointing at their sleeping younger self. “I’m pretty sure it’s why he can’t wake up.” _

_ Quentin smiles, just a little. “Yeah, maybe. But here’s the thing. I finally learned how to not go in without backup. So I think I’ll be OK for a couple minutes, and if we get out of his head, then he should be all right if your theory’s on point. Come on. Don’t you want to go home?”  _

_ He knows the answer. Knows it from countless nights of formless dreams where the only certainty is the desperate longing for a home he can never have again. And if he didn’t, he would know it in the way his counterpart’s golden eyes go wide, in how they suddenly fill with tears. _

_ “Home?” It’s a whisper almost too faint to be heard, like a ghost on the breeze that suddenly kicks up around them. _

_ Quentin isn’t surprised when Casper takes his hand. What does surprise him is the jolt, the sudden dizziness of seeing Casper and **being** Casper, looking at himself and holding his own hand - _

Quentin opens his eyes. Quentin opens  _ their  _ eyes.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ In the Brakebills infirmary, a Quentin who is only twenty-four, who is so much younger than the others in this tale, blinks awake, staring at the white ceiling. Someone is holding his hand, but he doesn’t look to see who. He had the strangest dream… _

_ He thinks he was told things, important things that he needs to remember. But who told him? And why? He has to remember, he has to figure this out. _

_ But that is another story. _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

It turns out that having two nervous Eliot Waughs in one smallish room is not a good idea. “OK, one of you out!” Other-Margo snaps the first time the two of them almost collide as they pace. “Or stop pacing, your call.” 

Other-Eliot drops into one of the chairs, hands knotted together in his lap. Eliot, for his part, just settles back against the wall. But both of them are staring at the pair of Quentins lying on the floor, one completely still and the other almost the same, except his eyes are moving under closed lids. They’re holding hands across the small space between their air mattresses, a strange touch even knowing it’s to strengthen the connection.

And that sense of something about to go wrong won’t go away. Eliot reminds himself it’s nonsensical, he’s just paranoid, it’s the result of four years of nightmarish bullshit. The plan is set, it’s simple.

But if it’s so simple, why has Other-Alice taken up the pacing that he and his counterpart stopped? Other-Margo doesn’t bother to yell at her, but then since she’s gone over to the window and has a death grip on the sill even as she stares outside, she probably hasn’t even noticed. 

Other-Julia is over in the corner and Eliot figures she’d be just as tense if she hadn’t buried herself in spellwork. She’s in so deep Eliot’s not sure she’s even aware when someone puts finger foods or a filled cup beside her so she doesn’t forget to eat and drink. He’s a little impressed by it; he never spent much time around the Knowledge kids but she’s powering through her work in a way that’s a little scary. 

He wonders if the words, the circumstances and the supplies speak to her the same way broken things do to Quentin, or if she can feel the rightness of her changes the same way telekinesis is always at his fingertips. 

He looks back at the Quentins just in time to see his Q’s eyes open, just in time to hurry forward as Quentin scrambles upright and then sways, pressing a hand to his temple. “Oh fuck he was right - El - shit, it hurts, I need to, I have to get - there’s no  _ time  _ -” 

Eliot tries to steer Quentin over to his counterpart’s new body, guessing what he means, but panic makes him clumsy - something’s gone wrong, he knew it - and he’s not sure at first who the other hands belong to until he looks up into his own face. 

Quentin shudders between them, his knees buckling, and Eliot looks at Quentin's face in time to see his eyes change, gold spilling over the brown like cream spreading through a cup of coffee. Those eyes blink once, hazy, then focus, not on Eliot but on his counterpart. 

“El? Can I come home now?” And the question is a shocked, desperate whisper, before - 

Quentin shudders again, cries out once and goes completely limp in their hold, golden eyes wide open and staring at nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love cliffhangers but I definitely want to make it clear - Quentin is NOT DEAD, whatever it looks like. No one is dying in this fic but the Plovers. All will be well in the end!
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	6. Did You See The Flares In The Sky?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one Eliot finds the way to save the Quentins, and another Eliot has to make it happen.
> 
> And there's the tricky part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope you're all well. Welcome to my all-Eliot chapter! Mostly we're with Eliot 40b, but 40a gets to start us off. 
> 
> This chapter has some references to Quentin's suicidal ideation and also to the abuse Eliot suffered at the hands of his father and brother. I think that's all the warning this chapter needs, but let me know if I missed something!
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers, especially Maii! :)

**Eliot 40a**

This can’t be happening.  _ Goddamn it, Q, you promised, _ Eliot thinks, over and over until he suspects that the very thought might be making him dizzy. He’s still in the penthouse’s little library, curled up in one of the chairs in a way that’s much more Quentin’s usual thing than his own. It doesn’t help. It makes it worse. 

There are now two Quentins lying still and unresponsive on their little air mattresses, and one of them is  _ his  _ Quentin. Eliot can’t look directly at them, can only glance over out of the corner of his eye to see that someone put blankets on them. 

He should have thought of that. 

He can’t think of anything right now except that Q promised this would go fine, and yet Eliot had known it wouldn’t, and he should have put his foot down, he should have insisted - 

“Motherfucker, that hurt.” The voice cuts through Eliot’s mental haze and he looks over to see Other-23 getting to his feet from where he’d been kneeling next to the Quentins. “All right, so I can tell you for damn sure, they’re both in the redhead’s brain. I got basically the mental equivalent of speaker feedback off them - pretty sure that’s what knocked them out.” 

“What do you mean?” Other-Alice asks. 

“It’s too loud in there. Look, Coldwater’s usually loud at the best of times, but it’s like top volume doubled right now. Couldn’t make out anything clearly from the noise level, but they’re both there. I couldn’t separate them out though.” 

“Well now what?” Eliot spits before he consciously decides to speak. “We just leave them like this? Both of them basically dead now because Casper didn’t know how to fucking run?” It’s not fair. He knows how unfair it is even before his counterpart lets out a sound that’s very nearly a snarl. 

“So what? He deserved to stay dead?” 

“Well, my Quentin certainly didn’t deserve to get himself in this mess helping yours!” When did he stand up? He doesn’t remember doing it any more than he remembers how he and Other-Eliot ended up right in each other’s faces. 

“Look, I’m no happier than you are about this -” Other-Eliot starts to say. 

“You have  _ no idea _ how it feels to -”

“Oh, don’t I? I think I know  _ exactly  _ how you feel right now.” Other-Eliot’s voice is oddly quiet, but the look in his eyes is anything but. “I’ve already had to bury him, remember? Except there wasn’t a fucking body, just a stupid bonfire and trinkets to burn. So don’t you tell me I don’t know how you feel right now.” 

Eliot takes a step back, then another and another, until he drops back into his chair again. He drops his head into his hands, trying to think. Trying not to remember how just this morning everything had been fine. A hand grips his shoulder, a small familiar hand - he assumes it’s his Margo and not Other-Margo, though he doesn’t remember Margo coming up here. Looking up just a little he knows he’s right because Other-Margo is talking quietly with both Alices near the staircase. 

“OK, so both of them are in our Q’s head,” Margo says, letting go of Eliot’s shoulder to sit on the arm of his chair. He leans his head against her side and closes his eyes again, hating how blatantly vulnerable he must look but unable to pull himself together just yet. “How do we get Casper out of there? Anyone?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Other-23 says, sounding like he means it. “I can’t tell which is which. Can’t even stand to stay in contact long enough to really take a look either. It’s like standing right next to a speaker blaring at top volume. Coldwater’s usually loud, but this is something else -” 

“If he’s so loud, how did you even listen to him that day in the first place?” Other-Eliot cuts him off. His voice is sharp enough that Eliot opens his eyes to see his counterpart exchanging a look with Other-Alice that he can’t quite read. But he can guess, because his Quentin’s told him how surprised he was, in hindsight, that their 23 listened to him at all that day. “Didn’t you know?” 

Other-23 looks uncomfortable, but he straightens his shoulders, not looking away from anyone. “Dead-me had me conned, all right? Why do you think I’m here?” 

“Because of Wicker?” Other-Margo suggests. Eliot reflexively looks for Other-Julia, but she must have left at some point while he was too out of it to pay attention. 

“No,” Other-23 says. “Well, yeah, but not just that. Dead-me told me to ‘do what he says’ and it wasn’t till after it was all over that I figured out he set me up. And Coldwater too, really. I don’t like him, but I hate being set up to help him die even more, so I want to help. But I can’t handle the both of them in one head like this, it’s too much noise. I’m sorry. But I can tell you, I used to know these twins. Identical. Obviously they didn’t have exactly the same thoughts or shit like that, but they were both naturally loud too. Being in a room with both of them? Like a less overwhelming version of what I just got trying to go into his head.” 

“So you think we should look into psychic problems involving identical twins,” Alice says, looking thoughtful. 

“Might be something to it, yeah,” Other-23 agrees. “In the meantime, maybe get a healer to look at them? Or at the redhead at least?” 

That’s a pretty good idea, and they use Kady’s book of contacts to find someone who can come by. Eliot breathes a little easier when the healer, a Scottish guy who only gave them the name Beck, tells them that Quentin is physically all right, just in a very deep sleep like he’d been put under a sleep spell. 

“I don’t know how to check a semi-alive empty body, but the, ah, other one seems to have steady vitals. Still, I wouldn’t advise keeping ‘im like that for too long,” Beck says, eyeing Casper’s new body with a degree of bewilderment that would be funny if Eliot felt at all like laughing. “Anything else I can help you with?” 

“No,” both Alices say, their heads already bent over a pile of books that might help fix this mess. Once Beck is gone, they all settle to try and find something that will help. Eliot can barely see the pages, the tears he is refusing to let fall blurring his vision. But he has to focus. Quentin spent months researching as the toy of a Monster, making himself focus through that to save Eliot. 

Eliot can do this. Can’t he? 

He stays at the penthouse that night. The bedrooms are full but he never had any intention of taking a room anyway. He lies on the couch in the library area - it’s too short unless he curls up, and in the dark he can dimly see the two sleeping figures on the floor. He pulls the blanket over his head so that he will sleep and not scream. 

“This is a bad idea,” Margo says the second night, when she realizes he means to do it again. 

“Quentin told me the one rule he had for working out of here was that we didn’t spend the night. Since that’s out of our hands, the least I can do is stay with him,” Eliot tells her flatly, leaving no room for argument.

It’s the third day when he finds the answer. “Hey. I think I’ve got it. There was a case in 1996 of identical twins - one sister ended up in a coma and the other sister, who was a medium, channeled her sister’s spirit to see if she was still there. But they got trapped in the awake sister’s head together. She went into a catatonic state.” 

Eliot has to pause, swallowing against how his throat goes tight at the memory of Quentin’s glassy, blank eyes. He clears his throat and starts again. “On the advice of the sisters’ teacher - they were casters, part of a clan not associated with standard hedge covens or a school like Brakebills - the comatose sister’s fiance used a shared dreaming spell to enter the medium’s mindscape. He was able to draw out his fiancee’s mind and put it back in her body.” 

“What happened next?” Alice asks. 

“She died anyway,” Eliot says. “Her injuries were too severe, but they were certain it was that which killed her, not the time she spent out of her body.” 

“And if they were wrong, and Quentin dies again because he was trapped in his counterpart’s head?” Other-Eliot asks, then clenches his fists. “But if we don’t do something they’ll both die, won’t they? I can’t - Quentin wouldn’t want - either of them - we don’t have time to keep looking and if this other woman really did die of injuries then it’s not relevant.” 

“So who goes in?” Other-Margo asks, and she glances at Other-Alice, who presses her lips together.  _ No, _ Eliot thinks,  _ that’s a terrible idea, they didn’t have enough time. _ It isn’t even about his own opinion of Quentin and Alice’s messy attempts at romance, in this timeline or theirs, or about his certainty that Casper belongs with  _ his  _ Eliot as much as Eliot’s Q belongs with him.

Frankly, how they sort themselves out after everyone’s alive again isn’t his business and he doesn’t want it to be. What is his business is that they do this thing right, and doing this right means a deeper connection than a few years of off-again, on-again dating where the off was usually at best a cold war.

“The book says that the guy who went under was not only the one woman’s fiance, he’d studied magic with both sisters for years. They had a connection formed over long years together,” he says, carefully neutral. He knows what he thinks, but setting off an argument is only likely to make things worse, and put Q and Casper in even more danger. So his job is just to present the facts, for now. Quentin needs him to  _ not  _ push, not here, not now.

Other-Alice lifts her chin, and from the way Alice looks away from her counterpart’s expression, Eliot has a feeling it’s not a good sign. Except that Other-Alice doesn’t look at any of them, except Other-Eliot. The pair of them stare each other down for a long, long time. Eliot almost doesn’t dare to breathe, only glancing quickly at his own Alice. He gets a small shrug; this is as confusing to her as it is to him. 

He supposes whatever silent debate is happening is the kind of thing that results from spending however long together on a quest to resurrect the man both parties love, knowing that getting him back will probably make rivals of them again. 

“Eliot should do it. And the summoning spell should be Julia.” Other-Alice says, and before anyone can respond at all, she gets up and walks downstairs. A moment later they hear the front door open and close. Another moment, and Alice gets up, smoothing down her jacket and then following her counterpart out, without a word.

“Summoning spell?” Eliot asks into the rather loud silence, because he missed that part. 

Other-Eliot shrugs. “It was my job last time. We have this spell to call a spirit, it will work to draw out a channeled spirit as well, get him back to his right body. But the deeper the connection, the better.”

And so it’s decided. The spell is cast at midnight - a between time, supposedly it makes it stronger. Eliot isn’t involved in the casting; all he can do is try not to pace too much as he watches his counterpart sit cross-legged in front of where the Quentins lay, taking their hands. 

"Ready, El?" Other-Margo asks, preparing to cast. The spell will be more effective if cast by someone the subject trusts, or so the book says. There's a tension between the Eliot and Margo of 40b that hasn't gone away yet, but it's no surprise that she's still the best bet to cast.

Eliot watches Other-Eliot’s eyes slide shut, and knows there’s nothing left to do but wait.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

**_(i: the lord of silver fountains)_ **

Eliot opens his eyes to find himself in a very familiar place. Standing on the grass in front of the Brakebills sign on a warm sunny day. Instinctively he looks up, half-expecting to find his role and Quentin’s reversed, but - 

“Sorry, no, but good guess.” 

Turning a little, Eliot finds Quentin sitting at the base of the sign instead, one leg stretched out and the other drawn up to his chest, a book resting facedown on the grass beside him. He looks like the Quentin he thinks of most, hair pulled back in a ponytail, in his dark jeans and black t-shirt from their early days at the Mosaic, before their Earth clothes had fallen apart. 

It can’t be this easy, can it? 

“Are you…?” he begins, trailing off when Quentin smiles. 

“I think you know, and if you don’t, you’re going to need to before you’re done. So you tell me.” 

Eliot scowls, but he looks Quentin over carefully, trying to spot clues. And - there - it’s in the eyes. Familiar eyes, but steady. Not calm, exactly, but there is a settled quality to this Quentin that he’d never seen before he crossed over to another world. “Hello, Makepeace,” he says, using Julia’s nickname for Other-Quentin. “Gonna stop being cryptic now?” 

He doesn’t think he looked away, but somehow suddenly Other-Quentin is on his feet, back to the shaggy red hair and prosthetic leg showing below the leg of his blue jeans. “I’m not sure I can help it entirely, sorry about that. Is this your dream or mine? Or his?” 

“All three, I think, from how the Alices explained the spell,” Eliot says. “You’re in trouble with your me when you wake up, by the way.” 

“Yeah, kind of had a feeling I would be. Walk with me?” he suggests, and without waiting for Eliot’s response, Other-Quentin starts walking, so Eliot hurries to catch up. Again, there’s a twisted kind of deja vu in all this, but with his longer legs he catches up to Other-Quentin much more easily than the other way around. 

“Where are we going?” Eliot asks as he falls into step with Other-Quentin, who is pretty fast for a guy with a plastic leg. Or whatever that thing is made of. Eliot would assume that’s the dream, but actually Other-Q is pretty nimble on the prosthetic in real life too, which he finds more than a little impressive.

He wishes he could have seen him learn how to be that way - or rather, that he could see his Quentin through a recovery like his counterpart had. 

“Nowhere in particular, we’re just walking,” Other-Quentin says, and Eliot realizes a little abruptly that this isn’t Brakebills. Or, rather, this is not entirely Brakebills. Some elements of the campus remind him of Columbia, where he never attended but he went to a few parties and there was also a thing during summer session his third year where different musical theater students did a bit of a swaparound. 

Other elements of the campus he doesn’t recognize, like a bell tower on a campus green. Other-Q catches him looking and laughs a bit. “The bell tower from Hudson University,” he says with a little smile. “Jules and I did a couple classes for credit there, they had a program for high schoolers, it was cool. Actually, I think you can see us, look.” He points to a pair of teenagers sitting on the tower’s base, and it’s a bit of a distance but Eliot would know that floppy hair anywhere. 

“So, this is fucking weird,” he decides, and Other-Quentin smiles at him. 

“Yes, yes it is, but I’ve been at this for a while now, this isn’t too bad. You’re here to find him, right?” 

“Obviously,” Eliot says, trying not to be too sarcastic. He likes Other-Quentin, even if he’s more than a little embarrassed about the time he cried all over him and then fell asleep. He tries not to be, because it’s  _ a _ Quentin, and if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t mind taking care of some other Eliot’s Q while said other Eliot couldn’t. And, fuck, that gives him a headache to think about so directly. But he still hates that he hasn’t been able to keep it together.

Shaking his head, he says, “So, do you know where he is?” 

Other-Quentin shakes his head. “Sorry, no. Not exactly anyway,” he corrects, tilting his head a little as he settles on the edge of what looks like Woof Fountain. Except that Woof Fountain is a bottomless fountain of normal-looking water, not molten gold. Carefully, Eliot eases himself to sit on the edge next to Other-Quentin, eyeing the swirling gold liquid warily. 

“So, what does not exactly mean?” he asks, and when he looks up there are glints of the same gold in Other-Quentin’s eyes - the same gold his eyes had turned right before he fell into his trance or coma or whatever it is precisely.

“I couldn’t handle him, right? He suspected that carrying him might hurt me, he had reason to think so, and I’m guessing that’s what happened. I thought I’d have a few minutes before it went south, long enough to do what was necessary, bad call on that one.” Other-Q sighs, trailing a hand in the golden liquid. “I can feel him, but I don’t know exactly where he is. I’m assuming it’s a defense mechanism, mine or his or both, so we don’t do each other further damage, you know?” 

“Makes sense. So, what am I supposed to do?” Eliot asks, trying not to be impatient. 

“Well, first, you should take this.” Other-Q pulls his hand out of the swirl of gold in the fountain, and he’s holding a card. The fucking - King of Hearts, with Quentin’s face and hair. Eliot takes it, fingers trembling, and it transforms in his hand to the end of a thread, bright red and shimmering, stretching down into the fountain’s pool. He looks up just as Other-Quentin says, “And second, maybe hold your breath?” 

Before Eliot can ask why, Other-Quentin’s hands are on his chest and he  _ shoves _ . Eliot falls backwards into the shimmering golden depths, falling… falling… 

  
  


**_(ii: in dreams I’m wed to a faraway boy)_ **

They aren’t really working on the Mosaic today. They should be, but as the years pass, it becomes harder to focus. Eliot asked, once, when Teddy was three, if he and Q could take Teddy and Arielle back with them when they finished the puzzle, and Quentin had said absolutely, but the truth is -

They have no idea how it will work, if they succeed. And Arielle isn’t even here anymore, not regularly - she’s off on her own quests, her own adventures, and Teddy has a map Quentin drew him on his bedroom wall that he uses to chart his mother’s trips. Arielle tells him stories about each route when she comes back to visit. 

It’s unspoken between them, but they cannot risk just… vanishing and leaving their twelve-year-old son alone. 

So, yes, technically Quentin is sketching out a new design but mostly Eliot is playing with his hair, trying to distract him. He doesn’t notice that Quentin’s skin is oddly cool, that Quentin himself is oddly silent. 

Teddy is just out of sight, playing with some of his friends - Eliot can hear them laughing. But then Quentin, with a low laugh of his own, sets the papers aside and tips backwards into Eliot’s lap, smiling lazily up at him, tangling their hands together. The ones with the matching copper rings, only months old.

Eliot doesn’t realize that Quentin doesn’t speak to him, but there is something that niggles at the back of his mind with their hands clasped. Quentin’s hands are never cool, but the skin against his palm is. Just like the Memory Quentin in the Happy Place…

Oh. He’s been here before, hasn’t he.

The children come around the corner and none of their faces are clear. Not even Teddy’s. Except… except the boy with dark floppy hair and familiar big brown eyes. He looks a lot like Teddy, actually, except he’s… he’s… Eliot knows those eyes, because he looks down to the not-real echo in his lap to find the same eyes staring up at him. 

“You could stay here,” he murmurs, kissing the inside of Eliot’s wrist the way Quentin used to do. “Stay here in the echoes, it would be easier, Eliot.” 

“It would be,” Eliot agrees. “But you need me. The real you. Even Makepeace needs me a little, to get you out so we can all wake up. I can’t stay here with you.” The thread is now wrapped around his left ring finger instead of the ring, the red string disappearing under the sand where they lay their tiles.

Eliot blinks, and Quentin is gone. Or, rather, the fake Quentin is gone, and he’s -

  
  


**_(iii: the tree on the hill)_ **

\- sitting in an unfamiliar backyard, with a boy he knows is the younger Quentin sitting on the tire swing, watching him. He looks at the boy and thinks this is who Alice last saw, floppy dark hair a little darker than their Quentin’s usually was as an adult, looking at him curiously. 

“You’re Eliot.” 

“Yes, I am. You… don’t know me?” 

Little Q shakes his head. “Sort of? I didn’t know Alice at all when she called me, and I thought Julia looked like her own grandma.” He giggles, kicking his feet. “She must have been so mad about that, but I didn’t mean she looked old, not really.” 

Eliot, who doesn’t know anything about this, can only say, “I’m sure she wasn’t really mad. You… remember when Alice called you?” 

Little Q nods earnestly. “I do. Dying again was very strange. It felt like falling asleep except  _ heavier _ . I didn’t know I was her friend who died, though, not until I ended up… here. Wherever here is. I knew who she was and I knew who Julia was. I knew there was an Eliot who was important to me, and also a Margo? And other people who are… harder to remember, a K name and a P name… But I didn’t know what you looked like until I saw you.”

“You were playing with…” Eliot trails off as his throat tightens.

“Teddy. I know,” Little Q says, tilting his head. 

“Are you real?” Eliot asks, and he shouldn’t sound so desperate with a child, but he can’t help it. 

“I’m what makes my body breathe, out there where everyone’s awake. Just that part of me. You have to find the rest of me, Eliot. I’ll show you where to go next,” Little Q says, and he gets off the swing. Eliot stands up, and lets the little boy version of the man he loves take his hand. 

Little Q leads him to a honeysuckle bush. “You have to climb in there,” he says, pointing to where Eliot can see there’s a hollow in the bush. “That’s how he got in, the other me, it’s how you have to get out. I’ll show you how.” 

He squeezes his eyes shut and then vanishes, replaced by a will o’the wisp light the same gold as the fountain pool had been. The little light circles Eliot’s head once, then soars into the hollow of the bush. With a sigh learned of years chasing after another little boy with the same smile but hair shades lighter, Eliot gets on his hands and knees and crawls in after him, finding that instead of the end of the bush, he’s climbed into a tunnel.

**_(iv: all that’s dark inside us)_ **

Eliot comes out of the tunnel into a hallway, long and echoing and full of mirrors. The light that was little Q is gone, but when he looks down he finds the red string wrapped around his wrist several times to make a thin bracelet. The red still shimmers, but it’s shot through with sparkling gold, now. As if he’s carrying that piece of Quentin just like he carried it in his pocket when it was still in a bottle. 

Strangely, it’s now a comforting thought.

It’s the  _ only  _ comfort as he follows the red-and-gold thread, footsteps loud in the silence. His own reflections at the edges of his gaze make him jump, and he is so focused on walking, telling himself to just keep walking, that he doesn’t notice at first when it stops being silent. When instead the air fills with whispers, somehow familiar but too indistinct to identify. 

The first shadows in the mirror that aren’t him come as one of the whispers laughs, a mocking sharp sound as he watches foggy shadows move together. He knows, somehow, that they are Quentin and Alice, reunited and off to be the brilliant fantasy romance Quentin used to think they must turn out to be once the star-crossed shit was over. 

_ He didn’t choose you, he won’t choose you, why are you choosing him? _ whispers a voice that almost sounds like his own. 

“I said I don’t care as long as he’s back, and I don’t,” Eliot says, and turns away, walking on. 

_ I’ll hate you. I died trying to save you. _

That whisper is Quentin’s, and it stops Eliot dead. “Other-you doesn’t think so.” 

_ Other-me hasn’t got a leg, he’ll take the pity fuck, because that’s all it could be. You don’t really want me, Eliot, you had your chance and now I’ll never believe you. _

“That will be up to you,” Eliot chokes out, blinking as his eyes sting with tears. He keeps walking, trying not to look to the left or right. Trying not to look at the mirrors that no longer reflect him but shimmer instead with images of other things. Memory and imagination, and whispers that crash over Eliot, too many to make out the words. 

He starts to run, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He runs but the voices only get louder, bouncing off the walls, chaos in his ears. 

And then he trips, sprawling face-first on the ground like he’d just been shoved from behind by Andrew. His father, the bastard, at least usually was up front about his fists and his belt, but Andrew… A father had a right to discipline, in their house, but an older brother’s torments had to be sneakier. 

Eliot broke his nose once, from Andrew shoving him down. Busted his chin open another time, countless scraped up hands and knees. This floor is smooth as glass, though - small mercy - not mirrored like the walls. So Eliot just lies there, for a long moment, the thread to Quentin a thick armband around his left arm now. 

“Do you even want me to do this?” he asks the red-and-gold string, and it was a mistake to look up because - 

He sees himself in the mirror. Or, no. He sees the Monster, who smiles a terrible vicious smile.  _ He’s mine now, you know. He set such a terrible blast to get rid of me, and all that happened is I get to keep him forever. _

There’s a Quentin crumpled at his feet, pale and still, bruises round his throat in the shape of fingers. Eliot can’t tell if he’s breathing or not. “No,” he says, getting up again. But the corridor is gone, it’s just one small space, the same image of the Monster now holding a limp, motionless Quentin in his arms reflected over and over and -

“No, damn it! You don’t get to win this!” Eliot drops to his knees, covering his head as he lashes out with the power that has sparked at his fingertips since the day he accidentally became a killer. There is a resounding crash as the mirrors splinter, the shards falling like snow -

  
  


**_(v: and now to see your love set free)_ **

\- and Eliot gets to his feet in a familiar place. The Brakebills campus at night, near the Cottage, the firepit where students usually build fires for spells or parties. Where they went to build a bonfire for Quentin, a funeral pyre to burn mementos because there was no body. But this time, the fire burns brilliant gold, and as he steps forward all other light vanishes so beyond the glow of the fire all is black as the void. 

And beside the fire sits Quentin, his eyes as golden as the flames, his hair snowy-white and shorter than Eliot’s ever seen, except for in that one breathless moment of regained control. He’ll never forget how Quentin looked in that moment, wide dark eyes and too-short hair, a pale blue shirt and the sunlight on his face. And already so tired. But this Quentin by the fire is more than tired. Eliot’s never seen such total exhaustion on Quentin’s face, never seen him look so lost.

Eliot knows without asking, knows in his bones, that this is  _ his  _ Quentin. And it breaks his heart. 

“Eliot?” Quentin asks, voice soft. “What are you doing here?” 

What - what is he - how can Quentin not know? “I came here for you,” Eliot says, and he doesn’t remember closing the distance, it’s as if he blinked and he’s next to Quentin, reaching for his hands. “I came here to bring you home,” he says, remembering - 

_ “El? Can I come home now?” _

Staring into Quentin’s golden eyes now, he knows without a doubt that was his Q talking through his counterpart’s voice. “I need you to come home with me,” he says, which is nothing but the truth. It doesn’t matter if Quentin chooses Alice, it doesn’t even matter if he hates Eliot now - or it does, just not as much. Nothing matters as much as Quentin coming back.

But Quentin is smiling, an oddly gentle, disbelieving smile. “You don’t need me, El. Penny told me everything. Other-me did say there’s a spell you need my help with, but if it wasn’t for that, you’d be all right without me.” 

Eliot can’t breathe. “What?” he manages to force out, and Quentin gets that little puzzled line between his eyebrows. 

“Penny. He told me. All about how I did what I was supposed to do, and your stories are all just getting started. I did the best thing for you all, dying like I did, I make a better memory than a person anyw-” 

“If I ever meet Penny 40 again, I am going to punch his face in and I don’t care if he’s a ghost,” Eliot hisses, cutting Quentin off because if he hears any more of this he will scream. “That was bullshit, Quentin, stupid Underworld lies they tell you because it’s their job or what the fuck ever, I don’t care. Q.” 

Eliot lets go of one of Quentin’s hands to skim his fingers through soft white hair, the feel of it the same if not the color. He slides his hand down, cups Quentin’s cheek, and feels the tears finally start to fall when Q leans into the touch. “The best thing? Sweetheart…” He doesn’t even register using the endearment, doesn’t see Quentin’s eyes widen when he says it.

“Losing you broke me, Q,” Eliot tells him. “You did save our lives, and I won’t deny that fact if it matters to you, but losing you is not a price I’m willing to pay. And not just me. Alice and I have been working together to get you back - imagine it, Q, me and Alice Quinn on a goddamn road trip quest to find out how to pull that off. We thought you’d get a kick out of it once you found out. And Julia? She’s waiting out in the waking world right now to do the spell that’ll finish up what I’m starting right here. We built you a new body using the blood you gave that crazy witch, and you know how we got it? Margo traded one of her axes for it, she knew the best way she could help and she did it.” 

He’s leaving things out, of course. But it’s deliberate, because what he needs Quentin to hear is that they want him, that they’re fighting for him. The time for full disclosure will be when they’re all alive and safe. “We decided, we’re not just letting you go. Not without a fight.”

“He said that,” Quentin whispers. “The - the other me. He said I wasn’t just needed for the spell, but that I wouldn’t have believed it from him.” 

“Do you believe  _ me _ ? You don’t have to yet, not all the way,” Eliot says, knowing it may take time to get Quentin’s faith back. That’s OK, they can make time. “Just enough to come with me, just enough to come home. You asked me if you could and you can, I’m here to bring you home. Please.” 

Quentin pulls away then, turning to stare into the fire. “I fell forever,” he says softly, “in a black void and then through bottomless flames exactly like that. I lost myself, El. And I remember who I was, but I don’t know - I don’t know if there’s enough of me left to be a real person again. I’m tired still, and I thought I was trying to get home but mostly I was just running from the Niffins. I wanted to come back, but I never really thought I’d be  _ allowed _ . I don’t - know if I can do this again.”

“You can,” Eliot says. “You won’t be alone again, I swear. Not unless it’s what you want.” 

Quentin looks at him again. “You’ll stay with me?”

“Couldn’t be dragged away, if you want me,” Eliot promises. 

“I always want you. Which is sometimes half the problem,” Quentin says with sudden candor. “You burned a peach at my funeral. I wondered why you’d pick that, when I thought you wanted to forget about that.” 

“I’ll tell you, if you come home with me,” Eliot says. “I have a lot to tell you, but I won’t do it here. Not like this, Q.” It’s a risk, to use his confession as a bargaining chip, but fuck it. Eliot will do what he has to, to bring his boy home. Hasn’t that been the point of all this from the start? 

“I miss you. We all miss you. Maybe we could move on, but fuck that. We don’t want to and we don’t have to, because you are  _ ours _ , and the goddamn afterlife, fucking magic itself? Not allowed to have you. Now come on.” 

Eliot gets to his feet, offering his hand, the one with the string now wrapped around his arm to the elbow. One of the benefits of living an entire life together is that Eliot knows there are times Quentin needs to be gentled, and times he needs to be bullied, just a little. Times when you have to just say  _ let’s go, now, _ and be done with it.

This feels like one of those times, as he sees that the other end of the string is wrapped around Quentin’s wrist. As he watches Quentin’s face in the flickering golden light, surrounded by the dark. Eliot came for him, but only Quentin can decide what to do, and he has to make that choice. Now.

Quentin doesn’t move for a long, long moment. He stares up at Eliot with those unusual golden eyes, then down at his outstretched hand. Then he lifts his chin, taking a deep breath, and he takes Eliot’s hand. 

Before he can even get to his feet the thread falls from Eliot’s arm, wrapping tight around their hands instead, glowing brilliant red and blazing gold as -

  
  


**_(vi: breathe your breath in me)_ **

Eliot opens his eyes to the penthouse library. He can feel Quentin inside him, a warmth curled below his heart, beating in time with his own pulse. 

He has Quentin, and only moments to finish the job.

Eliot scrambles to his feet, letting go of Other-Quentin’s hand. He’s dimly aware of Other-Q trying to pull away anyway, that he’s awake and his Eliot already has him wrapped up in a crushing hug. Later, Eliot will be glad of it - he’d never wanted to get him hurt, after all - but right now, right now - 

“Julia!” he snaps, desperate, reaching for her with his right hand, holding tight to Quentin’s with his left. She drops to her knees on Quentin’s other side, one hand catching his and the other holding Quentin’s free hand. And it was supposed to just be Julia casting, but some instinct tells Eliot that no, that won’t be enough, and so when she speaks he speaks with her. 

_ “I call you to me. I call you by the breath of your body. I call you by the truth of your soul. I call you by the spark of your mind. I call you by the light of your spirit.” _

Supposedly, in the old tales, this was a spell to call a lost love’s soul to your hand.

Eliot opens his eyes as he feels the warmth of Quentin’s spirit leave him, and he finds it hovering just over the body it’s supposed to go into, circling almost… uncertainly. Like it doesn’t know what to do, like its final choice has yet to be made. “Come on, Q, don’t leave me now,” he whispers. 

“Should we cast again?” Julia asks, her eyes fixed on the little golden light. But before Eliot can answer, another light appears, silvery-white. It circles the golden spark that is Quentin’s soul once, twice, three times, then falls like a tiny shooting star to Quentin’s chest. Silver light spills over him and then vanishes but - 

The golden spark spins once and falls too, sinking into Quentin’s chest and melting away, golden light tracing bright lines under his skin, spilling out from his heart to the rest of his body. Eliot can’t look away except he does look away, to where Alice is standing near Quentin’s feet, hand still raised to cast, a hint of silver still on her fingertips. 

“He just didn’t know the way, I think,” she says, and for one more moment, Eliot thinks he understands Alice Quinn all too well. 

But then Quentin’s hand in his is no longer limp, the fingers curling weakly around Eliot’s. He looks down just in time to see Quentin open his eyes, and for the first time since he woke from possession to Margo’s blank shock and her too-gentle voice as she broke the news, Eliot Waugh feels like he can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	7. The Turning of the Tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, everyone's alive again - but alive doesn't necessarily mean well, and there's still the little problem of a looming apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I hope you're all well!
> 
> Some content warnings for this chapter - a character explains the death of a sibling as suicide by bad guy to avoid a slow death by illness, and there's also some implied internalized ableism in this one. Quentin 40b is in a generally bad place, so warnings for depressive/self-destructive thoughts and some issues tied to being in a new body apply. 
> 
> As ever, if you see any other things I should warn for not covered here or in the tags, let me know!
> 
> Thanks as always to my enablers, especially Maii for reading over my drafts. Also, the lunar circumstances Julia 40b references here are from advice from my Person Maren, who knows much more about that sort of thing than I do. (Love you, dear, even when writing a note in a fic you don't read.)

**Quentin 40a**

The first thing Quentin is aware of is that he has a pounding headache. The second is that his mouth tastes  _ terrible _ , as if he’s been unconscious a lot longer than planned. The third and fourth things he realizes at the same time - namely, that someone is holding his hand and someone else is pulling him into a crushing hug. 

“If you  _ ever  _ scare me like that again,” Eliot’s voice is low and harsh in Quentin’s ear, and he leans back into the hug, too weary to be fazed by Eliot’s tone. 

“Didn’t mean to this time,” he murmurs, trying to tug his hand free from the grip on it - oh, that’s Other-Eliot, out cold and for some reason holding both his hand and that of Casper’s body. Quentin has a flash of shoving him into a fountain filled with gold instead of water. Weird. “How long was I out?” 

“Three days, technically we’re into day four,” Eliot says, and his voice is gentler but his grip isn’t. Quentin tries to free his hand again, and this time it works because Other-Eliot is waking up, yelling for Other-Julia. Quentin should watch, this is what they’ve been working toward, but he just turns fully into Eliot’s hold, tucking his head under Eliot’s chin and closing his eyes. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, and God, he feels terrible. Physically, it feels like someone ran a hot wire through his veins, and emotionally, well… He remembers waking up, he assumes he must have collapsed - the last thing he remembers is feeling his mind  _ give way _ to the other presence inside him - but he doesn’t need to use much imagination to picture what Eliot’s been going through, for three days.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Eliot says. “But for now - it worked, look.” 

Quentin looks, to find himself staring into his own face. Other-Quentin looks dazed, at best, and it’s very clear he’s only upright because both Other-Julia and Other-Eliot are holding him up as they hug him - but he’s alive. That still body Quentin’s own hair and blood helped make, that had left him more than a little unsettled three days ago when he’d first seen it, is now a person, is now brought to life by the spirit Quentin first saw in a hotel mirror in San Diego. 

His eyes are still gold.

For some reason, that’s the image that sticks with Quentin as his own eyes close and he lays his head on Eliot’s shoulder. He’s not asleep, and he’s not as dazed as his counterpart looked to be, but he drifts, strangely exhausted for a guy who’s been asleep for three days. 

“Nah, Bambi, I’ve got the headache from hell but nothing worse,” he hears Eliot’s voice say, but it’s from something of a distance so he knows it’s Other-Eliot, rather than  _ his  _ El. Distantly, Quentin thinks he got off easy. But maybe it’s only fair, considering the awful time Other-Eliot’s had recently. 

Quentin might actually sleep for a while - he must, actually, because the next thing he knows he’s waking up in his and Eliot’s bedroom back at the brownstone apartment, and Eliot is next to him, scrolling through his phone. Quentin’s mouth still tastes like something died in it, he really needs to brush his teeth and shower, but otherwise he feels more or less himself. No hot wire anymore, which is a drastic improvement.

Also, someone took his leg off, which - “Was I wearing the prosthetic that whole time? How long was I out?” he asks Eliot, who jumps a little, caught off-guard by Quentin being awake. 

“Yeah - I know that’s not advisable but we weren’t sure if you were going to wake up moving or not and I didn’t want you trying to get up and not be able to. Even if you were already on the floor. You’ve slept ten hours, give or take.”

All in all, that makes sense, though from the feel of his stump Quentin thinks he might stick with the crutch for a few days and not put his leg back on. Technically, a prosthetic can be slept in, Quentin just doesn’t personally care for the feeling, but having it on for three days without letting the skin breathe is just really unpleasant afterwards. 

So he makes his way on both crutches to the bathroom to shower - he feels stiff, yet, and not up to trying his luck with the single crutch just yet. He hasn’t been able to shower in hot water since he woke up after the Seam; something about the hot spray on his back reminded him just a little too much of the sparks when he tried. But warm is enough to ease some of the aches and definitely enough with a hard scrubbing to leave him feeling tingly-clean once he’s done. 

(And, maybe he’ll actually concede that Eliot’s right: separating shampoo, conditioner, and body wash instead of sticking with his old three-in-one is better, when he isn’t struggling to function. But not out loud.)

He gets a surprise when he looks in the mirror. His eyes are - they’re not gold. But there’s gold flecks in them like tiny sparks, that Quentin  _ knows  _ weren’t there before even if he’s never made a habit of studying his reflection. Three days, and he carried Alice the Niffin for months but the thing is, his tattoo was meant for holding. Not for holding a Niffin, which is why it started killing him before the end, but for holding a magical being, at least. Probably not only cacodemons either, or it wouldn’t have held a Niffin at all.

Quentin figures that’s why, when he released Alice, there wasn’t anything left behind. At least, nothing physical; the jury will probably forever be out on whether or not having a Niffin in his back left marks internally or magically. But this is different. He’d carried his other self inside for only three days but they were connected before that. Maybe it should unsettle him, to see reflected in his own eyes tiny sparks like the ones that killed Casper and took his leg. 

But somehow, it just feels  _ right _ . 

Quentin is very much the sum of the things that have happened to him, at least physically. His scars, magic-inflicted and self-inflicted, the wooden shoulder and the stump of his left leg, the black prosthetic when he wears it. It should be like that, there  _ should  _ be something left behind. He’s not entirely sure it’s a healthy thought, but for him it’s a steadying one. Things are  _ real _ , even when sometimes he gets too lost in his head to remember it. Even when, in this last case, the things mostly weren’t physical, what happened is still real.

He makes his way out to the living room once he’s dressed, on one crutch now. Eliot has the TV on but he’s not really watching it, just staring at it with his jaw clenched. Uh-oh, not good. “I’m sorry,” he says, joining Eliot on the couch. Eliot keeps staring at the television. 

“Eliot -” 

“I thought you were dead,” Eliot says, his voice flat, toneless. “You just  _ dropped _ , other-me and I caught you and your eyes were wide open like you were - like you were -”

Quentin has spent a lot of time, lately, relating to Other-Eliot by remembering what it was like to deal with the Monster, especially in the worst days between packing up his father’s house and the park, when he’d believed Eliot was dead. But now, he remembers a different nightmare, an older one. The bank heist, a cutting gesture of a spell, blood spurting. 

Eliot, lying dead on the floor from a hit meant for Quentin. His eyes blank and empty, wide open and staring. 

Quentin still doesn’t remember who told him that it was only the golem, Eliot was fine - he hadn’t been, of course, but he’d been alive - though it was probably Margo. He doesn’t even really remember anything else that happened. He only remembers staring at Eliot’s slack face. 

God, there are too many complementary awful memories in their lives.

“I swear to God, I didn’t know that would happen,” he says finally, his voice shaking just a little. “Eliot, please look at me.” 

Eliot turns his head then, and Quentin is struck silent by the storm in his eyes. “We are  _ done _ ,” Eliot says with harsh finality and for a dizzy horrible moment Quentin misunderstands, thinks that somehow scaring Eliot like this broke  _ them _ . He can’t - no - 

But then Eliot continues, “We do that spell Other-Wicker’s cooking up, fine, because like I said before, we live in this world, it ending would not be good. But after that, Quentin, I swear to God. No more of this.” 

Quentin isn’t panicked anymore but he is confused. “We… we already agreed on that.”

“We did, but - and this isn’t just aimed at you, OK? I threw myself into Fillory because I wanted to die.” Quentin starts to speak, horrified, but Eliot holds up a hand. “Don’t, Q. No one knew, because that was how I wanted it. But I also did it, to start, because you were going, and Margo was going, and like hell was I gonna let you go without me. I’d do anything for either of you, and…”

Eliot clenches his fists in his lap, and after a moment, Quentin reaches over, resting his hand atop them. Eliot lets out a shaky breath and uncurls one hand, gripping Quentin’s instead. “I’ve talked to Margo. She doesn’t know what she’s doing yet, but she’s agreed to leave us out of anything but consulting help. So has Alice.” 

“Oh,” Quentin says, bewildered. “You… told our friends we can’t help them anymore?” 

“No, I told them that neither you nor I is great at judging risks with those kind of stakes - you’re worse than me but I’m definitely not great at it either. And I asked them not to put us in those situations anymore. We’re not abandoning them. We’re just making it clear that our place is support staff now.” 

_ "I am the official sidekick to whatever you end up being," _ Quentin told Julia once. And sure, he’d been saying it partly as a pep talk, partly because it was true, but he’d always figured he’d still be there in the thick of things, just not the primary hero. Like he’d stepped back for Alice… and gotten her killed. Except. No. 

_ "I did it on purpose." _

He hadn’t believed her then but he knows better now. He had been caught up in an obsessive mix of love and guilt, and much of that guilt had come from the feeling that it should have been him, that it was somehow his fault. But whatever choices he’d made, Alice made hers. He understands that now, choices and their consequences.

_ "Just a minor mending," _ he’d said, and then his life had split in two, one where he survived and one where he didn’t. He’d been the fucking hero at last, but at what cost? And before, at Blackspire, Eliot had saved him from a terrible fate… and damn near doomed them both.

And he’d meant it, before, when he told Eliot he wanted to be done, wanted to retire. But Quentin is realizing now that he’d never really thought they’d be able to. He thought they’d try, and keep trying, and that would hopefully be enough, but someone would pull them back in. Eliot is telling him he’s made sure that won’t be the case. Which means they’re both going to have to stick to this, even when it’s hard. 

Like learning to walk again. Like learning how to raise a child.

“Support staff sounds good to me,” he says quietly. “I love research, after all.” 

Eliot laughs then, a bright startled sound that clearly even he didn’t expect, but then he makes himself stop, maybe afraid it’ll turn hysterical. Quentin’s been there a time or two. He doesn’t even hesitate, just reaches for Eliot, pulling him close until he’s half in his lap. It’s a little awkward but it doesn’t matter, the switch from their usual positions doesn’t matter as Eliot curls himself smaller and Quentin does his best to wrap around him. To hold on. 

“I promised this was the last time and I meant it, OK?” he murmurs in Eliot’s ear, low and fierce. Because he’s broken enough promises, intentionally or otherwise. He doesn’t intend to break any more.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Three days after the spell, and Eliot can’t help but think - maybe they did something cruel. Maybe they didn’t think this through. 

Quentin isn’t often awake - “he’s kind of a newborn in a weird way, maybe it makes sense that he sleeps a lot?” Julia suggested doubtfully on the second day - but when he is, he either stares blankly into space or curls in the fetal position, making terrible wounded animal noises. They brought him back to the penthouse in their timeline, hoping being in the right reality might help. So far, no luck. They’re keeping him clean with magic, keeping him “fed” with an IV, and fucking hell, if Eliot had known he was bringing him back to  _ this  _ \- 

He doesn’t know. 

“We had to do it,” Alice says. “Even if we had been ready to let him go, we need him.” 

Right. To save the world, again. And it’s that, really, which makes Eliot’s insides twist with guilt. He started this to bring Quentin back for his own sake, but if he wasn’t necessary would Eliot’s drive - and Alice’s once they were in agreement - have been enough? 

Eliot needs Quentin for himself and the others need him for magic - Eliot knows this is unfair and untrue but he can’t help thinking it - but what does  _ Quentin  _ need? What if they misunderstood it completely? 

_ “El? Can I come home now?” _

_ “I don’t know if there’s enough of me left to be a real person again.” _

No. Eliot can’t - he can’t have come this far just to lose Quentin again. He’s got to fix this, somehow.

He calls Alex because he’s not sure what else to do. They couldn’t wait for her to supervise, in the end, even though she’d said they should. And she’s Alice’s friend - or, Alice’s parents’ friend, but one Alice actually likes - rather than Eliot’s, but he calls her anyway. She doesn’t tell him they should have waited, doesn’t say they did anything wrong. 

“He just came back from the dead. You shouldn’t expect him to be immediately healthy, Eliot.” 

Eliot clutches the phone and looks at Quentin on the bed - yes, he’s making this call while keeping a pointless sort of vigil at Quentin’s side. “Is that why you didn’t bring your sister back?” he asks without meaning to, because the question has been lingering in his mind since he met Alex. She’s so obviously powerful, the truth of that written in the not-quite-human shades of her hair and eyes, and Alice said she planned vicious magical revenge for her sister’s killers. 

So why not bring her sister back instead? 

Over the phone, Alexandra Shepard laughs. “I didn’t bring Jenny back because she would never have forgiven me for it. She chose the manner of her death, because she was dying anyway. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than slowly from illness, at least for Jen. I didn’t bring her back because there is a truth to returning them, Eliot. It may be helpful to you - your boy seems to have an extreme case of return sickness, though all the texts say that whenever someone does this it’s a rough ride at first.” 

“What? What’s this  _ truth _ ?” Eliot asks, watching Quentin toss in his sleep. Behind those closed lids his eyes are as gold as they were in the dreamscape, but he didn’t come back white-haired. It gives Eliot an irrational hope, that and the… other thing he’s trying not to dwell on, that maybe they can come out of this. Quentin lacks ghost hair, so he can belong to Life again. 

Illogical, but Eliot can’t help it. 

“The dead return exactly as they were - except for whatever killed them, so long as that death was caused by something outside. You cannot bring back those who died of natural causes, because an organ failed or a physical sickness took them. You can’t, because they’ll only die again. I couldn’t do that to Jen. I speak with her ghost sometimes, and that is enough for us both. Your boy must have already been weakened when he died, that’s why it’s hitting him this badly.”

When Eliot hangs up with Alex, he takes the time to look more closely at Quentin. At his gaunt face, too-sharp cheekbones. The way the bones in his wrists are so obvious. They obviously didn’t build Quentin’s body to look so thin. Somehow, the long hair stuck, but his body is not the one they built. So… it must be what he looked like right before he died. 

Shadowed, fading already. 

Eliot wants to punch something. Instead, he wraps his fingers loosely around Quentin’s wrist, over the… other thing he came back with. It looks like a tattoo, a design inked in red around Quentin’s wrist, threads woven into an intricate design, something Eliot’s never seen before he woke from the spell and yet finds so very familiar. 

Of course, by now it’s familiar because he’s studied it on Quentin’s skin, and on his own. Because he came back with the same markings, on the wrist of the hand he offered Quentin in the dreamscape.

It gives him hope, but hope is not enough at the moment. He needs information, and he has a feeling there’s only one person he can get it from right now. So he gets up and leaves, ignoring the twinge of fear that Quentin will have melted away again when he gets back, and crosses from Library to mirror to Library to penthouse in another timeline. 

And from there he goes to Brooklyn. 

It feels weird to knock on the door like a visitor, and weirder still when Other-Quentin answers the door. He has a crutch today but he’s so - vibrantly  _ alive _ , with golden flecks in his eyes that weren’t there before, and for a moment Eliot wants to hit him. Because why can’t -? 

But all he really has to do is remember the moment Other-Q collapsed in a catatonic trance after trying to save Eliot’s Quentin, and his irrational rage vanishes. “Hey, how are things on your side?” Other-Quentin asks as he lets Eliot in.

“My Q isn’t doing well,” he says. “Which is why I’m here. Not for more magic,” he adds quickly when he sees Other-Eliot and the frown on his face. “I just need information, though it’s about a… tough time for you.” 

“Oh,” Other-Quentin says, exchanging a quick look with Other-Eliot. “Did he… forget he died? Does he think he’s just waking up after the Seam?” 

“I don’t know. He’s not responsive,” Eliot says, sinking into one of the armchairs and staring at his hands. “It’s horrible. I talked to the necro Alice knows, she said some of it’s normal, but also that people come back in the same state they were before they died.” 

“What, health-wise?” Other-Eliot asks, and when Eliot nods, his counterpart’s mouth twists. “Yeah, that wouldn’t help.” 

“You weren’t even awake yet -” Other-Quentin says.

“I have the memories,” Other-Eliot points out, and that - well. That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Because Eliot has those same memories that aren’t his, and he knows that the Monster saw Quentin fading if no one else did, but the problem is the Monster had no frame of reference to understand what exactly it was seeing. 

“I know it wasn’t good, but the Monster noticing Quentin was easier to pick up isn’t exactly the kind of specifics I need here,” and his voice comes out harsher than he’d meant it to.

“Right,” Other-Quentin sighs. “Um, OK, so the first few days after I woke up are a little blurry now, because I was in such a bad place. But my therapy was delayed in certain ways while I recovered so I know that I was on the edge of dehydration and malnourishment, and full-on into chronic exhaustion. That on top of whatever sensory overload shit he must be dealing with… it’s no surprise that he’s a mess.” 

“Do you have any suggestions?” Eliot asks, trying not to sound desperate. 

“Um, this might not be easily doable, but once he is aware, getting out of the penthouse if at all possible,” Other-Quentin says. “One of the fringe benefits of going away for therapy, for me, was a fresh place and a routine. But that’s later, um… I mean at this point just the obvious, sleep and food and stuff. Alice would be a better ask for the sensory stuff than me? Her thing seemed to be more about the things she couldn’t feel anymore, but still.”

“Wait, Q,” Other-Eliot says. “The magic sense. He’s got to have that too, it can’t be helping.” 

“Oh shit, I forgot,” Other-Q says, looking over at Eliot. “Did I tell you about that?” 

“If you did, I don’t remember,” Eliot says honestly. 

“OK, so, I can sense magic now. I can feel it, like, I feel the surges, for example. I can also sense people’s magic when I touch them skin-to-skin, it hits me as flavors, like a kind of synesthesia. Given he was in the magic, not just tied to it like me, and you used bits of me to help make his body, it seems likely he might have that too. So maybe… use gloves when you’re touching him, at first? If it seems to make things worse for him?”

All in all, they aren’t much help - Eliot needs to figure out how to help Q now, and this isn’t cutting it. But even though he wants to storm out, he doesn’t. He walks like a normal polite person, letting Other-Quentin walk him out. Just at the door, he feels a sudden weight in his jacket pocket. He looks up, startled, to see a little smile on Other-Q’s face. 

“Not like we don’t both know cards aren’t the only sleight of hand I know. I really don’t know what to do at this point, Eliot, but I wrote down in a little notebook everything I could think of that I’ve had trouble with since. In case we turn out alike in some of it.” 

Eliot smiles in spite of himself. “Thank you.”

“You’d do the same in my shoes,” Other-Quentin says, and that’s true, isn’t it? “But you’re welcome.”

And with that, Eliot looks over Other-Q’s shoulder to wave at his counterpart, then he leaves. He has a feeling he might not be crossing back over here at all, and he’s fairly sure if he does, he won’t be coming to Brooklyn.

But that’s OK. They have their future to get to and he… he has one to figure out, one way or another.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

Quentin is only able to think of the chaos bouncing around his head as  _ noise  _ when it abruptly stops. The quiet is like the darkness, before the soft dark became drowning, before it took who he was. It’s soothing, comforting. 

There’s something pressing against his - ears? Yes, ears, he has a real body again, not just the seeming of one in other people’s dreams. 

(He thinks of Q 41 and hopes he woke up. He thinks of Red and hopes he didn’t hurt him.)

There’s something on his ears and it’s made everything go quiet. Quentin feels his new body relax - his left shoulder isn’t numb anymore, whatever he’s made of it isn’t living wood - bit by bit, and it’s a familiar sensation. It used to happen when he could finally settle in his own space and open a book, often but not always a Fillory book. It happened when he and Julia watched movies with the lights dim. It happened when Eliot let Quentin curl up next to him and drift while Eliot and Margo talked somewhere overhead. 

The silence is like  _ safety _ , and because of it, Quentin dares to open his eyes. 

He’s lying on his back, blinking up at a white ceiling. That could be any number of places. 

Someone touches his wrist, a gentle warning touch, and Quentin tastes - 

There’s nothing in his mouth but he tastes tart white wine, can almost feel it in his mouth. He turns his head to find Julia looking at him, teary-eyed but smiling a little. She waves at him with her free hand and Quentin… waves back, after a moment. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, but… Obviously he can’t hear it but you can, can feel it in your throat when you talk, and he doesn’t feel anything.

Maybe he’s just messing it up?

But Julia’s shaking her head, squeezing his hand. As he looks at her, he realizes he can see a faint purple gleam under her skin, a shimmer around her like a purple-tinted heat haze. And, and his hand on the bed has one too, only the shimmer is a sort of brown. He closes his eyes again and remembers the gleam of brown light that he’d fallen into, that turned out to be the mind of a version of himself who was still half a boy. 

Brown light and the taste of honey, and he doesn’t understand. 

Julia shakes his arm carefully and Quentin opens his eyes again, to see a notepad held up before him. Julia’s handwriting, the bubble dots to her I’s that she’d never outgrown from when all their girl classmates were doing it in fourth grade. 

_ We put sound canceling headphones on you. Alice thought if you were feeling too much, cutting off a sense might help. Did it help? _

Quentin nods jerkily, his neck stiff. What is he made of now? It’s a creepy, vaguely morbid thought but he can’t shake it, not when he knows his original body is, is atoms in the Mirror Realm and the ambient. He reaches for the pad but his clumsy fingers can’t grip it and it falls to the bed. He has no idea what his face is doing - he can feel the muscles moving but he doesn’t seem to exactly remember what expression the feeling goes with - but he must look unhappy because Julia squeezes his hand in a comforting way.

Then another hand - big, long fingers and an opal ring - picks up the notebook. Quentin looks up at Eliot and his eyes sting with tears just from seeing him. 

_ Don’t push it, we just wanted to know. _

But Quentin wants to talk. He tries to speak again but that doesn’t seem to work either, if the little frown on Eliot’s face means anything. But then he’s reaching out with a hand Quentin realizes is shaking, carding his fingers through Quentin’s hair. Quentin leans into it like he always leans into Eliot’s touch, instinctive.

The shimmer around Eliot is warm red, and the flavor on Quentin’s tongue is all sweet spices, and it’s the last thing he remembers before he slips under again.

The light is different when Quentin wakes up next, and turning his head, he realizes that’s because it’s dark out, so it’s just the lamplight and no sunlight now. He’s still wearing the headphones because everything is still silent, but when he looks the other way it’s Alice sitting with him. He tries to smile, he’s not sure if he succeeds but whatever he does is enough to get him a smile in return. 

Alice has the notepad now and after a moment holds it up.  _ Want to try writing again? _

Someone must have filled her in, Quentin realizes, managing another nod. This time, he’s expecting his hands to be clumsy and he just manages to keep his grip. He wants to ask a lot of things, but before anything else, really - 

_ I’m sorry. _

Alice looks at the page and he does know her, not as well as he once thought or claimed but well enough that he knows what it looks like when she’s trying not to cry. She takes the notebook back.  _ We’ll talk about that when you’re more recovered, but thank you. _

The shimmer around her is a pale green.

Quentin thinks of colored shimmers, of fire both blue and gold, and maybe it’s the relief that he thinks he knows what he’s seeing so he’s probably not crazy. Or the deeper relief of at least starting to make some kind of amends - not much, but he also can’t sit up right now, so it counts - but he falls asleep again before he can try to get the notebook back and ask more questions. 

Dimly, as he slips under, he hopes that whatever it is, he can start managing to spend more time awake than asleep soon…

He gets his wish. Slowly, but he gets it. He is able to stay awake for more than a handful of minutes at a time, and he can move. With a walker, he can shuffle to the bathroom and out to the kitchen to eat. Can’t eat many things - oatmeal works, even flavored, or at least apple cinnamon does. 

(Quentin thinks this may be because every time Eliot touches his skin, he tastes sweet spices and the apple cinnamon flavor is kind of like it, but he keeps this thought to himself.)

Saltines are also doable, or dry toast, and surprisingly boiled chicken or vegetables as long as nothing’s added to the water. He can make these things himself but he’s usually not allowed to unless it’s using the microwave or the toaster. He tries not to be frustrated by this, and it helps that he still can’t listen and look at the same time. And he can’t speak. He can only write, which stops him from saying the snippy little comments in his head. 

It feels like being trapped. He dreams of flying in the gold again and he misses the freedom of it - but when he wakes he always remembers that he wasn’t really free then either. And then he wonders if he wasn’t better off in the fucking void, where at least he didn’t know what he was missing. 

That’s actually the reason he starts pretending to be asleep more than he is. When he’s awake, he chooses to wear the headphones because he can do more with sight than with hearing. He can write notes to whoever is sitting with him, he can read. He can’t watch videos though, he tried on his tablet with the subtitles on but his eyesight blurred trying to look at the screen.

But he sleeps with the blindfold on instead, because it’s more comfortable. He wakes in darkness and sound, then reaches for the headphones to swap. This too he can do on his own which is… something. A small and pathetic something, but still. And with the blindfold on, if he doesn’t reach for his headphones, they don’t know he’s awake. They talk quietly in his room because there’s almost always someone with him and that someone needs to be kept updated. 

This is how Quentin knows something’s not right. He hears Eliot talk about freak amounts of lightning in Philadelphia and Margo about magic storms in Fillory. Alice and Julia have a whispered conversation about how 23 tried to travel and got not only thrown back but burned over half his body. Luckily it sounds like the burns in question are more like a cross between friction burn and a bad sunburn than being burned by fire, but still. 

“At least our casts haven’t started blowing up in our faces yet, and the surges have actually stopped,” he hears Eliot say one day. “That will help when we cast to fix this.” 

“Yeah, and when is that going to be? Because you know we need -” 

“Bambi, not yet,” Eliot says, sharp, and despite his best intentions Quentin falls asleep again for real after that so he doesn’t find out what it is they need. All he knows is that no one will talk about anything important with him, they won’t even tell him what he missed. Eliot and Julia and Alice all write that they’ll talk more when he’s better, and he doesn’t bother to ask Margo because the last two things she said to him directly were both mockery. He isn’t about to ask for more.

But something is wrong.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

Sixteen days before the deadline to the end of the world, Alice mirror-calls to tell them that it’s been two days since there were any surges. At all. In either Earth.

“Isn’t that what started the magic storms in Fillory 40b? Surges lessening here, I mean,” Quentin asks and Alice grimaces in the mirror. 

“Yes it is.” 

“Somehow,” Quentin says, “I don’t think the lack of surges is going to end up being good news.”

Fourteen days before the deadline, the sun goes weird. 

Eliot and Quentin are indoors when it happens, but they have the curtains open. Still, at first neither of them really notice the change in the light because they’re unpacking. Brakebills sent the rest of the things they both had in storage and Quentin also got things sent from the storage unit where his mother put most of his father’s things. 

Eliot thinks tossing your dead ex-husband’s worldly goods in a storage unit and calling it a day is cold, but efficient. He doesn’t say this to Quentin, who spent most of the morning repairing broken wooden planes with a strange look on his face. Eliot has a flash -  _ “then break them on purpose”, Quentin throwing toy planes at the wall _ \- and says nothing. But he helps Quentin carefully wrap the repaired planes in cloth and set them in a new, bigger box than the one the pieces had been dumped in.

“Do you want to keep them?” 

“I don’t know - is the light funny in here?” Quentin asks, and for half a moment Eliot thinks Quentin’s evading the question but then he realizes, no, he’s actually right. The living room windows are a nice size, and the sunlight streaming in is… 

In the Monster’s memories, when the four would-be gods killed his Sister, the sunlight turned red. This isn’t the same, this is a tint, like they’re seeing sunlight through glass colored with just a little green, enough to spill a little of the color into the light. Eliot is almost willing to believe someone did a spell on their glass, until they go out onto the back steps. 

It’s a little like the light during an eclipse - he and Margo got a kick out of watching that together, actually. Everything just goes strange. They’re not the only ones outside - some of their neighbors are on their own back steps, Eliot can hear other voices of people who presumably went out their front doors, and the people across the alley with the bees on their roof are standing up there together looking. 

Nothing looks right, all the colors turned wrong because the wrong light is hitting them. Eliot thinks of that long-ago memory that isn’t his, a blonde woman on a stone altar, yes. But he also thinks of how everything can turn strange before a particularly bad storm, before a tornado. He reaches for Quentin’s hand and he knows his own hand is trembling. 

It doesn’t get better that night, because the moonlight, like the sunlight, has changed. Night usually washes colors out, but somehow it’s more than usual, like a sharp-edged greyscale city. “It looks like the Mirror Realm,” is all Quentin says, but that night they don’t cuddle in bed so much as cling to each other, and they both wake from nightmares more than once. 

Things are no better when they wake up, and Eliot digs out his collection of blackout curtains for every window in the apartment.

Two days later, Eliot watches Margo pace his living room. “At this rate, Bambi, you’re going to wear a hole in my floor, and now that I’m directly responsible for it, I object to that,” he says mildly.

“Wait, directly responsible now?” Margo asks, briefly diverted. 

“Mm-hmm. Turns out the hedge we were subletting this from has decided to stay in Seattle now that things have improved for the local covens, so he put me in touch with the actual landlord and we are now renting this place as long as we want.”

“Starting on that domesticity plan, are we?”

“You know it.” 

“Assuming, of course, that the world doesn’t end in twelve days,” Margo points out. 

“We assume that,” Eliot drawls, slumping back on the couch and rubbing his temples. They do assume that, but it’s starting to get worrisome. Their spells aren’t backfiring, thank fuck, but Eliot has to admit he doesn’t like the delay. The trouble is, they’re still more or less missing half a key component. 

“Hey, Q, did the B-Team give you any updates on their nerd’s recovery status?” Margo asks, almost as if she’d been reading Eliot’s mind. But then, Casper’s functionality is the question that’s causing the delay, isn’t it?

“Not yet,” Quentin says. “Other-Eliot says they’ll make sure he’s ready before it’s too late, and that’s all I can get out of him. Other-Alice doesn’t really like to talk to me and Alice says her counterpart isn’t telling her anything more useful. Other-Julia isn’t actually talking to basically anyone because she has to keep rewriting her circumstances as weird shit keeps happening.”

“You mean like that?” Margo asks, pointing at the windows now covered in blackout curtains. 

“Yeah, like that,” Quentin sighs. 

That night, the only thing Eliot remembers of his dreams is the constant ticking of a clock. And that every time he woke in the room lit only by rainbow sparks they cast again for comfort, tick-tock, tock-tick echoing in his ears, Quentin was sitting up beside him, a dim shadow in the faint light. 

A waiting game doesn’t suit either of them, not so close to being done, to being free, but there’s nothing else to do right now.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

They do tell Quentin how many days he’s been back even when they don’t say much else. He wakes in the middle of the night between day ten and eleven, to the sound of thunder. Except… the thunder doesn’t sound quite right. There’s a humming under it he recognizes because he spent months surrounded by that sound, feeling it to the core of his non-corporeal form. The hum of ambient magic.

The penthouse is silent so Quentin sits up and cautiously pulls off his blindfold. In the dark, with no waking noises, he can see and hear both. His curtains are open because Julia thinks sunlight is good for him, but what he sees instead is a cloudy night sky, the window glass dotted with raindrops. And lightning rippling through the clouds. 

But the lightning is red-orange-yellow, like the sky is burning. 

And that’s when Quentin decides he needs to find out what’s really going on. 

_ I need to talk to me, _ Quentin writes when Alice is the one sitting with him the next morning. 

He still can’t stand to both see and hear at the same time in the daylight, so Alice writes back,  _ Why? _

The truth is, because he needs someone who will tell him the truth without being too worried about his condition to be blunt. He’s pretty sure he can trust himself not to have too much sympathy. But the one upside to writing everything he has to say is that it is much, much easier to lie. 

_ I don’t know how long we’ll be in contact with the other timeline, and I want to thank him. I owe him a lot, don’t I? _

Actually, this is true, and he does plan to thank Red. But he also remembers that Red told him they needed him back for a purpose as well as wanting him. Quentin remembers that Eliot didn’t deny this. But now no one is saying anything, probably afraid he’s too weak. And Quentin knows that he is weak, but if they need to do something then it has to be done anyway. 

He doesn’t trust anyone else to understand that but another him, not after all that’s happened. Not when Eliot writes  _ We don’t want you thinking about anything but getting better just yet _ and Alice writes  _ We have things handled right now _ and Julia…

Julia at least tells him something’s wrong. It surprised Quentin when she did, when she wrote flat-out, Yeah, things are fucked and I’m working on a spell to fix it, but then she didn’t give him any details and so here he is, angling to meet his alternate self for answers. 

It’s the best idea he has.

Alice leaves him alone when he asks her to, claiming that he’s just going to read. This is, technically, the truth. Quentin absolutely has a book in front of him. But he knows that when his door is shut, he can hear voices but not what they’re saying. It’s too muffled for that. 

It seems like a good practice point, and he has a feeling he can’t afford to wait any longer for his recovery to happen on its own pace. So he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and takes off the headphones. Noise rushes in: the air cycling through the vents, the faint hum of traffic on the streets below, the louder but still indistinct voices down the hall. With his eyes still closed and his own breath loud in his ears, Quentin makes himself focus on the voices, to see if he can tell them apart. 

Eliot and Julia and Margo, and he knows that Alice is out there but she doesn’t seem to be talking at the moment.

Carefully, Quentin opens his eyes. For a moment it’s still too much, the world lurching around him, his stomach knotting with the sudden vertigo, but he twists his hands in the blanket under him and breathes through it. He can do this. He can do this. He can make this new body, whatever it’s made of, his by  _ forcing  _ it to obey. Can’t he?

_ “Because we started the process, we have to finish it. So we’re bringing you back. We need you, because you and I both have to fix this.” _

His counterpart said that. Quentin’s memory is a little fuzzy, like the things he experienced when he was dead aren’t meant to be held by a living mind. Like how details of the life on the Mosaic slipped away as the days passed - or vanished until some stray thought or experience drew them out again. So he doesn’t remember exactly what he needs to fix, but he knows it’s important. 

He also knows the strange red-braid mark on his wrist is important, but he’s… afraid to ask about it now. Still, it makes a good focus, training his gaze on it till it all but fills his vision. Until the world steadies, and he can risk looking up again. 

He can see, and he can hear. The light is still a little bright, noises still just shy of too loud in his ears, but it’s bearable. He can do this. One step at a time. He can do it.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Alice comes out of Quentin’s room with a strange look on her face, walking over to the breakfast bar where Eliot, Margo, and Julia are talking over muffins. “Quentin wants to talk to his counterpart,” she says, taking a double chocolate muffin for herself. “He says he wants to thank him, which makes sense, but…” 

“It’s a good sign, though,” Julia says. “The more alert and interactive he is the better, because… Look, I don’t want to push this but I finally figured out the best time to cast and it is last-minute so if we fuck it up, we’re fucked. And we need him.” 

“Wait, wait,” Margo says, holding up a hand. “Why are we waiting till the last minute? Shit goes wrong for us literally all the fucking time, why are we staking something this huge on one shot?”

Julia sighs, fiddling with the crumbs of her muffin. “It’s the lunar circumstances. I had to wait because there was… some kind of problem with the moon. A coven out in California took care of it in both timelines, an old family who’s been practicing long enough that they know their shit even if none of them ever set foot in a magic school. Anyway, point is, they fixed it, but one of the base spells I used needs a full moon and one needs a new moon.” 

“Full moon for the greatest power, best for big magics, new moon for rebirth and new beginnings,” Alice mutters, seemingly to herself because she doesn’t seem to notice Julia nodding in agreement.

“Well, that’s just not possible, not in the same places at the same time,” Eliot says. “Except… wait. Our timelines aren’t synced up, we’re a few months behind 40a, aren’t we?” 

“You’ve got it,” Julia says. “There is exactly one night when our side has a new moon and theirs has a full moon. Problem is, it’s literally the night leading into the last day we have to do anything at all, which means if we fuck it up, we’re fucked. But there’s no other way.”

“So we need Coldwater back on his feet, like I’ve been saying,” Margo says, and before anyone can reply she continues, “Look, I don’t want him hurting himself all over again either, but he can crash out once we’re not all gonna die. There will be time then. We only need him for what, an hour or two?” 

“At most, yeah, but do we even know if he’s capable of casting yet?” Julia asks. “That was one reason to wait as long as possible before we told him and he started getting worked up - the more he can manage to recover, the more likely it is that he can do magic.”

“All the more reason to let red-headed Q talk to our nerd,” Margo says. “He should know better than anyone else what his own other self is capable of, if he’s faking being more able than he is or if he thinks he’s worse off than he is. And I doubt he’d lie to cover a counterpart’s ass at a time like this.” 

“So I’ll call other-me and have her send him over,” Alice says with a little nod, and goes off presumably to do just that. Eliot is done with his own muffin, but there’s one left - apple-cinnamon, and that’s the oatmeal flavor Quentin seems able to tolerate so maybe…? 

Before he can think twice he scoops it up and heads down the hallway. He doesn’t knock because if Quentin’s reading he’ll have the headphones on anyway… or Eliot thought he would. But he actually opens the door to find Quentin standing by the window, watching the pouring rain. He has his walker, hands white-knuckled on the grips, but he has no headphones and no blindfold. 

“Q?” Eliot asks, pitching his voice soft. Quentin twitches slightly anyway, laboriously turning with the walker toward Eliot. There’s a tiny smile on his face as he lifts one hand to point at his ear and then make a so-so gesture, then tapping his lips and scowling. Which Eliot takes to mean that he’s testing out the hearing and sight at once with decent but iffy results - decent because clearly it’s no longer an overload but maybe still hard? - and that his voice has still not come back. 

“If you sit down, we can talk with your notepad,” Eliot suggests, and he wants to help as Quentin shuffles over to the bed but he grits his teeth against it, thinking of Other-Q and his crutch, his quiet insistence that he had to practice. And Eliot remembers from another life that crowding Quentin too much is a bad idea but he’s finding it hard to avoid that because Quentin was  _ dead  _ and -

And now he’s not, and he’s also settled on the side of the bed looking at Eliot, those newly-golden eyes puzzled and concerned, maybe a little frustrated too. So Eliot pushes the thoughts back and sits on the bed too, offering the muffin. “It’s the same flavor as the oatmeal, you might be able to eat it,” he suggests. 

Quentin can eat the muffin, it turns out, if he eats it piece by piece, carefully. Eliot feels some tension go out of him when the first few bites go well, and this is so fucking - messy. Goddamn it. “Why didn’t you wait to test yourself until someone was here, Q?” he asks, still keeping his voice low. “If you’d had a problem -” 

Eliot stops because Quentin shakes his head hard, reaching for the pen. _ I needed to just do it, Eliot.  _

“No, you need to be careful.” 

Quentin frowns, bending his head low over the pad so his hair hides his face. Briefly, Eliot regrets making his hair that long even though he did it knowing Q preferred it.  _ I can’t just sit and wait to be coddled like a child, I have to start functioning again.  _

And Eliot knows he’s right. He does. But Quentin looks back up and he almost looks angry, and Eliot just - snaps. “Goddamn it, Quentin, you were dead! Fucking forgive me for wanting to keep you here this time after working so hard to get you back!”

Quentin’s hand jerks on the page, leaving a long thick line, but he doesn’t back down either. _ If I’m going to be alive I need to figure out how to live, Eliot. _

“You haven’t even been back two weeks!” 

_ Yes, and I know something’s wrong that you’re not telling me. You brought me back, but if you guys are going to shut me out, what was the point? _

Eliot stares at the writing, and he needs to say something. He knows he does. But he can’t. He can barely breathe, much less think. Is that what Quentin thinks they’re doing, when all they’re trying to do - all Eliot wants - is to keep him safe for a little while? To give him time to recover before having to jump back in? 

Before he finds his voice, there’s a knock at the door, and Eliot is honestly grateful for the interruption.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

It’s the first time Quentin’s made the trek over to Timeline 40b, and he sort of expects it to feel different when he crosses over. It does, actually, but only in the sense that they’re having completely different weather. Looking out the window he can see a downpour, while Quentin’s own New York City has gone dry and hot as if they were in the desert. Although given the way some of that rain almost looks steamy, it might be about that hot here too. Lightning the color of flames shimmers through the clouds for a moment, almost as unnerving as the green-tinged sunlight and sharp-edged greyscale moonlight at home.

Making things even more uncomfortable, it turns out that this penthouse is worse because for whatever reason, his timeline’s Kady made some redecoration choices while this one hadn’t. So he steps through the door from Other-Alice’s office into a room that makes him instinctively brace for the Monster to appear. That  _ cannot  _ be helping Casper’s recovery.

He probably shouldn’t be thinking of his counterpart as Casper anymore.

“So, look,” Other-Margo says, “we need you to find out how far along he is, recovery-wise. What you think he can handle, shit like that.” 

Quentin nods, absently glad that he brought his crutch rather than wear his leg. It had been a little deliberate - he knows how much  _ he  _ would hate to talk to a counterpart who is perfectly well if he was the one barely able to move and unable to speak, so he figures it might help. But at the moment he’s glad that it gives at least one of his hands something to do as he shifts position. “Have you told him anything?”

“Not yet,” Other-Julia says. “We were trying to get him as recovered as possible before upsetting him.”

_ Oh great, _ Quentin thinks, immediately annoyed. It’s unfair, he knows, but Other-Quentin wasn’t dead  _ that  _ long, did none of the B-Team remember that he’s not actually stupid, even if he’s not always functional? Even if Other-Quentin doesn’t remember anything from when he was dead, and so doesn’t remember their conversation with Quentin 41 lying knocked out at their feet, he’s going to have picked up that something’s wrong by now. 

Damn, damn, damn.

(Also, he probably shouldn’t let Margo’s B-Team nickname stick in his head, but he can’t help it.)

“I’ll see what I can find out,” is all he says aloud, before going down the hall. It occurs to him a moment too late that he didn’t check which room, but then he doesn’t need to because he hears Other-Eliot’s raised voice. Not the words, not through a closed door, but still enough to tell him where to knock. 

Other-Eliot opens the door and his mouth twists at the sight of Quentin. “Hello, Makepeace. I’ll leave you guys to it, huh?” He pushes past Quentin and down two doors to what must be his own room before Quentin can respond, the door slamming closed behind him. 

Great, that’s promising.

Quentin’s counterpart is sitting on the bed, dressed in worn blue pajamas with his hair brushing his shoulders. But aside from the hair and the golden eyes, he looks very like the reflection Quentin remembers seeing in the mirror right after surviving the Seam. Except angrier, at the moment, than Quentin had had the energy to be. 

“The Alices said you couldn’t see and hear at the same time,” he says, making his way to the chair by the bed. Other-Quentin eyes his crutch and Quentin resists the urge to make a snide comment about how staring won’t make it go away. He did this on purpose, he reminds himself. 

_ I’m working on it. Eliot thinks I’m overdoing it, _ Other-Quentin writes.  _ Still can’t talk for some fucking reason. _

“That’s weird,” Quentin says. “And of course your Eliot thinks so, don’t you remember how he was in Fillory after we got that fever?” Quentin doesn’t remember much of the fever, just some very strange, often disturbing dreams. And Eliot’s voice, tired and broken by the end, talking to him about everything and nothing, and at the very height, begging him not to go. 

Once the fever had broken, Eliot had turned into a helicopter husband, which had been comforting for two days, endearing for a couple more, and then  _ annoying as fuck. _ At least the argument that eventually broke out managed to both end in make-up sex and convince Eliot that Quentin was better, was really not going to die on him.

(There had been an equivalent sickness that turned  _ Quentin  _ into a helicopter husband, a few years later, but that’s not currently relevant.)

_ I don’t think that’s the same, _ Other-Quentin writes. 

“Really? Why not?” 

_ Because all this is, is pity. Poor Q, he killed himself and we had to save him, and we can’t tell him anything because he won’t be able to handle it. I know something’s wrong, you told me, I think even Eliot told me in the dreamscape. I can SEE it out my window but no one is telling me anything. Why do you think I wanted to see you? We don’t go easy on ourself. I figured you’ll tell me the truth. _

Quentin stares at the writing. He is, obviously, very familiar with his own habit of assuming the worst about how people see him, and it’s the kind of thing that makes him wonder how anyone can tolerate him when he can barely live with himself. In some ways, seeing it from a kind of outside makes him a little less harsh about it, because he remembers weeks upon weeks of feeling Casper’s loneliness, remembers the blue fire that knocked him on his ass. He can guess what it was like, to be the captive of Niffins.

But he also remembers the way Other-Alice could never stand to look at him for long. Other-Julia’s too-tight hug. And the way Other-Eliot had literally broken down in his arms. 

“OK,” he says, taking a deep breath. “You’re right, keeping you out of the loop isn’t the best idea. But you’re wrong about it being pity. They love you, they missed you so much, and God knows it was - it took me a while to believe it too but they wanted you here. They want you to be OK, it’s not because you’re pathetic or whatever bullshit our fucked-up brain decided on this time.” 

_ What makes you so sure? I can barely walk, I can’t - _

Quentin, impatient, snatches the pen. “I don’t have a fucking leg. You were dead, and trapped in the magic, and it was a nightmare. I get that. But you’re back now, and you can recover. I know you can because I did. You think it was all that different for me at the Seam that day? You think I wasn’t fucking tired? The difference between you and me is, is a split-second of thought, that’s all. I came out the other side, and so can you.” 

Other-Quentin looks away with a shrug. Quentin grits his teeth. “You want to know how I know it’s not pity? Because your Alice couldn’t even look at me, it upset her too much. Your Julia hugged me like if she let go I’d disappear. And your Eliot? He broke down sobbing, asking why you left, why you were gone. He dove into my head to get you out and save us both, him and your Alice and Margo made sure you had a body to come back to. So yeah, maybe they’re more scared for you than they need to be, but don’t belittle it like that.”

After a moment, he hands the pen back, and as his counterpart writes, tears fall onto the page.  _ I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I was just so fucking tired, and no one seemed to see me anymore. I just want to make it worth it. I know saving me was hard but don’t you of all people know that is only one more reason I can’t sit this out? _

Quentin remembers deciding to stay at Blackspire because the quest required sacrifice. Because magic being gone was his fault and this would fix it. Because if the Mosaic wasn’t meant to show him and Eliot what they could be together, then what it must have been for was to make him strong enough to be left alone with a Monster for eternity.

“I think you have to talk to them,” he says very quietly. “None of this is what you think it is, but the ways I learned it aren’t - we’re not the same people anymore, too much has happened. What I will tell you is what’s happening. The way magic came back, it fucked shit up. We have a spell to stop it, and the spell needs you and me since our spell blew up Everett and put the magic back. It’s a major mending, your Julia designed it.”

_ I don’t know if I can do magic, I didn’t try that yet, _ Other-Quentin writes, and finally looks up again. Quentin hasn’t seen his own face in a mirror look that lost since… since Eliot showed up in San Diego.

“Well, that’s easy enough to figure out,” Quentin says, reaching for the book on the nightstand. It’s an old paperback, the spine creased - it’s not that hard to rip it in two. “Try mending it,” he says, and when he gets a glare in response he shrugs. “If you’re not up to it yet, I am, no harm done. Come on, are you actually making an effort to recover here or not?”

_ I can tell when I’m trying to manipulate myself, _ Other-Quentin writes, raising his eyebrows pointedly, but he twists his fingers in the necessary tuts, both of them holding their breath. The pieces of book shiver in place for a long, long moment, then slowly come back together and become whole.

“There we go then,” Quentin says, and when he reaches for the book their fingers brush. For the first time he tastes his own magic, or near enough - it tastes like honey with that same hint of bitter herb all the 40b people’s magics have, and he knows that his own must just taste of honey. 

_ What’s with the flavors, and the colors? _ Other-Quentin writes.  _ You know about that too, don’t you? _

“Yeah, I know about that,” Quentin says. “Or the flavors anyway, though I’m guessing the colors are the same thing. We can sense magic now. I guess we had to get something for all this bullshit, huh?” 

It’s odd, that for once seeing his own smile feels like a victory. But they did, didn’t they? They’re both left marked by what happened to them, in Quentin’s missing leg and Other-Quentin’s missing voice, in the way both of them have different eyes now. In scars and in that odd red design on his counterpart’s wrist.

Getting a sixth sense out of it as well is at least something cool to get back. But holy fuck, the B-Team has a lot to talk about, and Quentin is already wondering just how he’s going to convince them to actually  _ do  _ some of that.

Yay, playing mediator. Just what he always wanted. But he started this, he and his other self sitting in front of him on the bed. They had no choice, and he is doing his level best not to feel guilty. But still, they started it, and that means they need to finish it. They need to finish it because no one wants the world to end. They need to finish it so he and his Eliot can finally, finally walk away. 

So for that, he’ll do whatever this crowd might need him to do, to make this work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	8. Like Paper Dolls and Little Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot has a conversation with himself. Both Quentins have conversations with multiple people. And it wouldn't be a brewing apocalypse if something didn't blow up, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm on a roll this week! 
> 
> I hope the chapter finds you well.
> 
> This chapter has a conversation centered around Quentin's suicide in 4.13, so all relevant warnings for that, and for discussion of his depression and meds. If I missed anything, let me know.
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers, especially Maii.

**Eliot 40b**

It’s cowardly to leave, Eliot knows that. But promises to be brave or not, he is still a fucking coward. So when Makepeace goes in to talk to Q, he not only leaves them to it, he leaves the penthouse entirely. He considers just going out into the city, but it’s been pouring rain almost nonstop since sometime in the night, so he decides against it. 

He considers the clock to Fillory, stopping in to chat with Fen, but no. So instead he goes to the Library portal door, thinking that maybe if Alice is in her office, he can ask her for something to distract himself with. 

The understanding he had with Alice while they carried around a piece of Quentin’s soul on their road trip quest to get him back is frayed now, somewhat. Alice redirected herself into - not giving up on Q, but splitting her time between saving Q and saving _everything_. Eliot dove completely into working with a Quentin who wasn’t theirs and another version of himself, gritting his teeth against the differences and the unfairness of how much easier they seemed to have it. 

He knows their story wasn’t really easy either. He _knows_ . But he can’t help thinking that a damaged leg and a missing one are still less cruel than death and the in-between world of magic itself, less cruel than being ready to speak only to find that the person you need to talk to is _gone_.

(He’s never tried to find out why his injuries were completely healed when his counterpart’s weren’t, but it has occurred to him that in his world, there was one less person to heal.)

So. He and Alice no longer have that oh-so-brief harmony, not exactly. But when he steps into her office to be met with a sharp little smile, he smiles back. Only he’s also met with a look of surprise from Penny 23 of all people, who is here for… some reason? Eliot nods at him, confused, and gets a nod in return. 

“I’ll come back later, Alice, I’ve gotta head back to campus,” 23 says, and leaves by the door, going out into the Library proper. Huh. Isn’t that odd. 

“Is he not following Julia like a tall puppy anymore?” Eliot asks, and Alice’s lips twitch. 

“I think he knows how that story ends - just like I know,” she says, looking down at her desk and rearranging some of the papers on it. “How are things over at the apartment?” 

“Makepeace is talking to our Q, who is apparently pissed off at us.”

“What?” Alice says, looking up at him. “Why? Not - it’s not that we brought him back, is it?”

“No, or at least he didn’t say that. He knows we’re not telling him what’s happening and he’s mad about that.”

Alice clenches her jaw. “It didn’t occur to him that he’s been dead for months and we’re trying to take care of him until he can actually walk on his own?” 

“Don’t let Makepeace hear you say that,” Eliot says mildly, although he more or less agrees. Still, he remembers _“it’s not going to grow back”_ and maybe… maybe the best person for Quentin in this moment really is his other-self, as much as that fucking burns. “What did you mean, how that story ends?” 

Alice rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look right at him after. She turns, so Eliot is looking at her face in profile. “Do you remember talking at the Tower? Or in that fucking hotel room? And how stubborn I was that I wasn’t giving him to you?” 

“Yes,” Eliot says, because at that angle he’s not sure she’ll see him nod, but he doesn’t say anything else, not sure what she’s getting at. 

“I can’t look at him, even now. The other one, I mean, that you and Julia call Makepeace. I can’t look at him because - it’s not because it hurts, or not only that. I can’t look at him because he could give me the answers our Q can’t yet and I want them. But I don’t want them from him. I want them from the Quentin I had to look in his surprised eyes before they closed, before they were gone with the rest of him - do you know that’s still the worst part? That in that last moment he looked more _surprised_ than anything else? My other self broke up with her Quentin because he made 23 take her out, and maybe I’d have done the same but now I just want _answers_.” 

Eliot’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t understand what that has to do with the concept of giving Quentin to him or not doing so, but he’s still trying to figure out the words for that when Alice starts talking again. 

“I said I wouldn’t give him to you, but the first thing he wrote to me was an apology. What for exactly I don’t know, it’s Quentin and he’s always been messy even when he’s all the way coherent, which he wasn’t. But I realized - I don’t want this anymore. I want answers, and I want the air cleared, but… It’s always going to be like this. Like something that doesn’t quite fit. Like something that should fit, it’s always seemed like it should, but it never does. So I guess I am giving him to you, if you want him.” 

“I think that if you take yourself out of the picture, the rest is up to Quentin, not you or me or anyone else,” Eliot says quietly, and Alice scoffs. 

“Oh, I don’t know, how would he like to have someone order his life for once?” she mutters, then rakes a hand through her hair. “No, that’s not fair. Whatever I think of the stunts he pulled, it wasn’t - for spite. And I don’t want what I do to be about spite either. But I think - I can do something real here, Eliot. Something in a place where I don’t have to be afraid of what I can do, as a woman, as a one-time Niffin. I know what the Library has been, but they’re _decimated_ right now. They’re uncertain right now. But they have all these resources, and there has to be a better way. For some reason Zelda wants me in the lead, and why not?” 

For a moment, Eliot wonders - what would they have been, had all four of the kings and queens declared that day on the cliff ever managed to sit their thrones together? He’s wondered it before, but usually about Quentin. This time he wonders what Alice the Wise would have been in Fillory - a force of nature, he suspects, but how he’s not sure. But he does think it’s a pity they never found out.

“You think you can change them from within?” he asks.

“I don’t know. But I think I want to try. And I don’t think Quentin will want to come with me, even if… even if the conclusions he and I end up drawing aren’t what the 40a versions of us did, in the infirmary after everything. I’ll find out for sure, of course, but like I said. I think I know how this story ends.”

“It puts you ahead of me, anyway,” Eliot says. “And for what it’s worth, I have a feeling that if anyone can make this place something else, it’s probably you.”

“We pulled off what we set out to do on our road trip, didn’t we?” Alice asks with that thin-blade smile, and Eliot nods. They did, whatever happens now, they very much did. With help, but still. “I have to go see Zelda, you can hang out in here if you want.” 

“Not afraid I’ll touch something?” Eliot jokes. 

“The books on the shelf are free if you want to look. Touch anything on my desk and you’ll regret it. Anyone would,” Alice replies with an ease he’s not sure he’s ever seen from her before, and then she leaves. 

Eliot has to laugh. They could have been friends, in another life. They are now, in a weird prickly way. It’s not the worst outcome.

There’s a desk ornament, one of those ball things where you let one go and it sets the others swaying. Eliot flicks a finger and the soft clack of metal spheres fills the silence. He didn’t touch anything, after all, and anyway he suspects that’s a leftover from whoever previously occupied this office so Alice probably didn’t hex it.   
  


If she did, playing with it telekinetically seems to have protected him anyway.

“Alice lets you hang out in her office?” comes a voice from the red-tinted mirror. His own voice, in fact; Eliot looks up to see Other-Eliot leaning against the desk in Other-Alice’s office, eyeing him curiously. 

“You seem to be allowed to do it too,” he replies, sitting up straighter. 

“No, she told me to wait for her here,” Other-Eliot says easily. “My Q still on your side?” 

“Yeah,” Eliot says, gritting his teeth. 

“How’s yours doing?” Other-Eliot says, and Eliot wants to say he’s better because it’s the truth, isn’t it? He wants to tell his counterpart to mind his own business, wants to - 

“How did you handle it in San Diego?” is what comes out instead. “He’s - fucking mad at me because I want to keep him safe, and I don’t understand how I’m supposed to do anything else?” 

“Hang on a minute, Alice can get me when she’s back,” Other-Eliot decides, and he has his cane today as he steps through the mirror, taking a seat in one of Alice’s other chairs. “What are you talking about, anyway? Last we knew before today, your Q was still barely responsive and then today we get the call for my Q to come over and talk to him.” 

“He can’t talk,” Eliot says, slumping back again. “Until today he couldn’t bear to see and hear at the same time but I walked in on him testing it with no one around.” 

Other-Eliot bounces his cane between his hands, an old-new gesture that Eliot remembers in his own muscle memory, the habit of an old man. “Things in San Diego were… strange, at first. I just showed up one day - he’d been packed off before I even woke up. No one bothered to update him about me, or me about him. So when I found out what had happened, of course -” 

“You went right there, without thinking,” Eliot says quietly, because it is, of course, exactly what _he_ would have done, isn’t it? And they are the same person, if now altered from each other by the way things changed for them after they woke up post-Monster. “It didn’t go well?” 

“Not quite that simple. Things were… weird with us. Quentin was wary of me, he’d lost that ability to trust we’d always been in awe of. It took time to build it back up, is what I’m saying.” 

“You think he doesn’t trust me? After I’m the one that finally pulled him out?” Eliot asks. 

“I don’t know. From the way my Q tells it, most of his trust issues were cemented by what happened after the Seam, so I’m guessing your Q’s problem isn’t exactly the same. I’m only saying, it’s still probably going to take time, because just like us, both of you have a lot of healing to do.” 

Eliot dearly wants to argue with that. But while he can lie to himself very well in his own head, somehow he doesn’t think his tactics would do much good against his _other-_ self. “I just want us to do that together,” he says, because if he can’t tell himself that, who can he tell?

“I get that,” Other-Eliot says. “Believe me, I get it. But, unfortunately, you have to talk to him first. Believe me, I know it fucking sucks. But it’s worth it. I swear, it really is.” 

The thing is, Eliot believes him. He’s just not sure where to start.

Then, somewhere in the distance, there’s an explosion - on both sides. Because _of course_ there is.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

Quentin leaves his counterpart practicing Poppers - as good a way as any to start getting used to casting again, and the one upside to the surges ending is that it’s safer to do that now. He figures that in a case like this, magic is like a muscle; when he was at the Ravenwood Clinic he had to strengthen his arms and intact leg, and even the muscles in his stump, to recover. Whether Other-Quentin will need physical therapy is an open question, of course. Quentin himself suspects it’s just adjustment that’s needed, but one of the Alices might be more an expert on that angle than he is. Still, the concept itself works well enough for magic too.

So he leaves Other-Quentin in his room to cast and heads back out to the main area. Other-Eliot is nowhere to be found, which is a little awkward, but Other-Julia and Other-Margo are both there. “So what’s the verdict, Long John Silver?” Other-Margo asks, and Quentin blinks. 

“No,” he says flatly. “I’m not going there.” He’s not quite ready to joke about his, his disability, or at least not ready for other people to make flippant nicknames about it. Especially when it’s not one of _his_ people. “As for your Q, he doesn’t need the headphones or the blindfold anymore, and we tested it - he can do basic magic. I left him practicing so he’ll be ready on the day. Which, speaking of, do we know when that is yet?”

“So he was just… not trying?” Other-Margo demands. 

“No, that wasn’t it,” Quentin says. “He didn’t think it would work today but he tried it anyway, because he knows something’s wrong. And that no one would explain it to him. Though I’m not sure why you’re assuming the worst here. I don’t think anything either of us have done recently earned _that_.”

Other-Margo scowls, then sighs. “I want this over with. That’s all, redhead-Q.” 

_That_ nickname makes Quentin laugh, a little. “Fair enough. Seriously, though, how much time do we have? Because you guys look like round two of the Great Flood or something out there, and my New York feels like the fucking Sahara, so…” God knows how they’ll explain this if they succeed in stopping the apocalypse, though at least their matching sets of former questers won’t have that particular job.

Well. Quentin fucking hopes not, anyway. He supposes the Alices might, in their capacities with Libraries A and B, but otherwise it shouldn’t be their job.

According to the news so far, most people are assuming it’s global warming, so maybe something good will even come out of it. It doesn’t match the Book of Revelation (Quentin read that in high school out of a morbid sort of curiosity) so he guesses that the Bible-thumpers are just _confused_. Which is kinda cool really.

He listens as Other-Julia explains the particular moon cycle combination that means they are waiting until the absolute last minute, and he doesn’t blame Other-Margo for looking deeply unhappy about this. It’s running a risk that maybe they shouldn’t have to run, but in a lot of ways it makes sense. There’s no point to doing it sooner if they don’t do it right, and there’s always the possibility that if it doesn’t work without the moon phase angle, it will fail to work in some way that prevents them from trying again. So, yeah, all in all he’s with Other-Julia on this one. 

The faint clattering sound of a walker makes Quentin turn to see his counterpart making his slow way down the hallway. He has his notepad in the walker’s little basket, and he sets it down on the counter where Quentin, Other-Margo, and Other-Julia can see it. While they look, Other-Quentin levers himself onto one of the tall chairs, leaning against the counter. 

_I need you to tell me what we’re dealing with here. How bad is it?_

Quentin tunes out most of the explanation because he knows it already, and without really thinking about it makes a fresh pot of coffee, because he’s good at making coffee and also currently kind of bored. A huff from Other-Quentin makes him turn in time to see, scrawled on the notepad, _I’m not allowed coffee yet, not fair._

That actually startles laughs from everyone else in the room, which makes Other-Quentin roll his unsettling gold eyes, but… Well. It’s odd to see that tiny smile from the outside rather than feeling it on his own lips, but Quentin knows his other self is more pleased than annoyed, whatever he might pretend.

“To be fair, Q, coffee’s strong enough to knock you on your ass right now, but I think we have that spice tea you always loved, want to try a cup of that?” Other-Julia suggests, and so they settle back into place with three mugs of coffee and one cup of tea, looking over the specifications of a spell to save Earth and Fillory, in duplicate. 

It’s one of the weirder afternoons Quentin’s had, but not a bad one, all in all. They even get lunch - pizza - and his counterpart discovers that he can, in fact, handle plain cheese pizza. _Well, it’s not coffee, but it’s a start,_ Other-Quentin writes, and if Quentin knows that he misses pepperoni, well, one thing at a time. 

Then the phone rings and Other-Julia answers it, her eyes widening as she listens. “Penny, you’re what? Shit, and no one can leave? And there was an explosion? What blew up?”

A pause while she listens.

“Oh, great, you don’t know because Fogg isn’t telling anyone. Of course he isn’t. OK, well… be safe, and we’ll let you know if your counterpart is at Brakebills too, because if he’s not and you’re still stuck the night of, you’re out of the cast, same as me.”

Other-Julia hangs up, rubbing her temples. “OK, what’s going on now?” Other-Margo asks, sounding about ready to kill someone. Quentin, while not usually all that homicidally inclined, can’t blame her. Other-Quentin is tense, hands white-knuckled on the handles of his walker. 

“That was Penny 23. Apparently the Brakebills wards have gone into full defensive mode. No one gets in and no one gets out. And something blew up, but Penny doesn’t know what yet. Teacher or not, he’s still out of the loop, at least for now.”

 _23 is a teacher?_ Other-Quentin writes. 

“Yeah, he was the only traveler available to teach new ones. I just hope 40a’s Penny was also at Brakebills, or else that’s one less person who can cast the mending spell,” Other-Julia adds, looking at Quentin, who can only shrug. 

“I… don’t really talk to 23, though last I knew he also had a teaching job. So probably?” He runs down a mental list. They have the Margos, Eliots, Alices, both Kadys are trying to get back to New York in time. Other-Margo just said both Joshes will be casting with her and Quentin’s Margo in their respective Fillorys. Now they know that both he and Other-Quentin can cast, and Alice mentioned something about talking to the Zeldas and the Sheilas just to have more help with it.

The Julias can’t do it because they’re no longer the same species, which means they won’t match, which… Oh shit. “Oh shit,” he says aloud. “Our magic senses are different.” 

“What?” Other-Margo says, as Other-Quentin’s eyes widen.

_You said that we have to match. That’s the whole reason I needed to be functional in time to cast. Because it needed a mender, and it’s better to have both versions of me involved since we triggered this. But his magic sense is different from mine. He tastes magic, I can taste it but also see it._

Other-Julia shakes her head. “No, luckily that won’t matter. I can sort of feel it, your internal circumstances aren’t different enough to be a problem. There’s certain differences between all of us caused by the different experiences since the divergence point. My circumstances take that into account.”

“Well, what -” Other-Margo stops talking as the doorway to the Library opens, Alice and Eliot trooping out… in duplicate. It’s a bit fun house mirror-y, his Eliot with his cane and his Alice with her bobbed hair, Other-Alice’s longer hair in a ponytail (which is really unlike any version of her) and Other-Eliot still bearded in his dark suit. There are other differences too - his Eliot has shorter hair but it’s less styled (Other-Eliot is using too much gel, it’s kinda weird), and Quentin’s pretty sure the Alices have different glasses. Also, different clothes all around.

He sees his Eliot look between him and Other-Quentin, and initially wonders if he’s thinking the same thing, but then he sees a glint of mischief and raises his eyebrows. Not the time, even if he’s had a few thoughts along similar lines about doubles. 

From the grim expressions on both Alices’ faces, it is not good news bringing them here. 

  
  


<><><>

**Eliot 40a**

Eliot briefly considers trying to lower the tension with a wisecrack about how seeing two Quentins next to each other is the start to a few dreams he’s had. But the way his Quentin’s eyebrows go up tells him it’s probably not the best idea. So instead he just settles in the gold chair and Quentin sits on the arm where it’s easy for Eliot to slide an arm around his waist. Eliot does it because he wants to, and because while Quentin is determined to not let his missing leg stop him from doing things the way he always has when possible, Eliot feels better steadying him. Especially when he’s on the crutch. 

Also, if it gives his counterpart or Q’s a little nudge, well, good. They need it, from what Eliot knows. But he probably won’t get the chance to do much else, all things considered. 

“What happened now?” Other-Margo demands. 

“Did you hear about Brakebills going into lockdown?” Other-Alice asks, and apparently only Eliot and his other-self don’t know what she’s talking about, judging from the nods and yeses she gets. 

“Uh, clarification here?” Other-Eliot asks from where he’s settled on the couch, Other-Quentin on the other end. They’re not touching, which is almost as weird to see on the outside as Eliot imagines it must feel.

“Penny called,” Other-Julia explains. “Brakebills’ wards have shifted so that no one can come in or leave the campus. Do you guys know what caused the explosion there?” 

Oh, do they ever. But Eliot bites his tongue. Alice stands even straighter, and her counterpart is, if anything, so stiff Eliot’s afraid she might snap. “The Niffin boxes,” Alice explains. “Every Niffin box, in both 40a and 40b, all over the world, just exploded. The Library had a room of them, and Brakebills has its own storage area. So do most magic schools. They’re all in lockdown too, by the way, as far as we can tell.” 

“Wait,” Quentin says. “The Niffin boxes exploded. So… they all escaped?”

Alice nods. “Yeah. They all fled too - if some of them want revenge it seems like they want freedom more, which makes sense. Niffins tend to be opportunistic that way. I tortured you because I was angry with you and also bored, not because I would have gone out of my way to do so if I wasn't stuck in your tattoo. I did my experiments… I might have found the effects fun but if they didn’t hurt my subjects I would have done them anyway because harm wasn’t the goal, knowledge was.” 

“And Charlie didn’t start messing with us until we were close by. Until then he’d mostly been haunting Brakebills,” Other-Alice says, eyes fixed on the windows. “Most Niffins are more interested in the magic, in being part of everything, than anything else. Some of them might fight each other, I remember that could happen, but the problem is that it’s every Niffin ever caught, released all at once.” 

“What’s that magic going to do to our already fucked up situation?” Other-Margo asks, hands on her hips. 

“That’s why we’re here,” Alice says. “I think we need to make sure both sides have the complete spell now, because when Eliot, Q, and I go back to our timeline I think we need to stay. So, Julia? I think we should take one last look at the cast, don’t you?” 

With both Alices and Other-Julia bent over Other-Julia’s spellwork, Other-Eliot and Other-Margo take advantage of a break in the rainstorm that was going earlier to smoke on the terrace. Other-Quentin’s eyes follow them, but he doesn’t move from his stool, switching notepads. It looks like he’s doodling, which is no surprise, but he doesn’t look happy about it. Actually, that is also not a surprise. 

“I really don’t like being here, it’s worse than ours,” Quentin mutters, and Eliot looks up at him. 

“Well, you heard Alice, we’re staying gone after this,” Eliot says mildly. 

“Yeah - were you anywhere near that explosion? And if yes, you’re not hiding some kind of injuries, are you?” Quentin asks, gaze suddenly sharp as he looks Eliot over, as if he could see any wounds through his clothing. 

“No, Q, I wasn’t. I heard it while I was talking to my counterpart, but I was not anywhere near it.” 

“Good,” Quentin says. “Speaking of counterparts, I’m going to go say goodbye to yours, check in with mine? I think… you understand the whole ‘lied to for your own protection’ thing better than I do, you know?” 

Eliot doesn’t pretend to understand what exactly it is between his Q and Other-Eliot. He thinks it might be a little like what he and Q would have been if Q was actually straight. Some of the intensity they’ve always had but without that edge of wanting under the easy bonding. So he only smiles, tightening his arm around Quentin’s waist for a moment before letting go. Quentin gets his crutch under him and maneuvers himself outside, and Eliot lopes over to the counter where Other-Q is brooding, leaning against it. 

_Did he send you to check up on me? Other-Quentin writes._

“Only a little,” Eliot admits. “That obvious, huh?” 

_You two act like Mosaic Us. Only younger than we were by the time we got like that. Same idea._

That… is no surprise, actually. Eliot’s thought along similar lines himself, mostly before he and Q officially rekindled things. “I hear you have some issues with people keeping shit from you. Not that I blame you,” he adds. “When I woke up, my Q was already doing rehab in San Diego. Margo didn’t tell me because she wanted me to recover more before I pushed myself. You know they were doing the same thing, right?” 

_I’m sure you weren’t happy about it either._

“Well, no,” Eliot concedes. “But also, I wasn’t dead. You were. And I thought - we’ve cut it too close, my Q and I. I can’t imagine how fucking overbearing I’d be if I’d ever really lost him. I’m not saying you’re wrong to be upset, just… Margo and I worked it out. And I get why she was worried.” 

_I guess I understand too. I just… It’s not easy._

“I get that, Goldeneye, believe me,” Eliot says, and the nickname gets him a small smile. “I’m just saying, you have a second chance. Do you really want to be angry at everyone for it?”

_No, I guess I don’t._

Before Eliot can reply, Alice clears her throat. Over her shoulder, out on the terrace, Eliot sees his Quentin hugging Other-Eliot tight, saying something to him, before letting go and coming back in. “I think we’re ready to go,” Alice says. “My counterpart and I are going to move the mirrors to our respective penthouses so we can keep communicating, but I don’t trust the connection enough to keep us on this side.” 

The farewells are - fucking weird, honestly. A lot of shaking hands with oneself, and Quentin gets a hug from Other-Julia. Eliot squeezes Other-Quentin’s hand and ruffles his long hair before they go, earning himself a very unimpressed look, but also a smile. So he calls that a win. And then it’s over, him and Q and Alice crossing from Library to Library to penthouse. 

“Do you need us, Alice? ‘Cause if not we’re gonna go home,” Quentin says. 

“No, not today,” Alice says, and her voice is brittle. Quentin pauses. 

“Are you OK?” 

“No, but I will be. Seriously, you guys get out of here. Enjoy the downtime while you can.” Just in case, Eliot hears, and honestly, he hopes she’s wrong. But it’s dark by the time they get home, and the greyscale sharpness is made even worse by shooting stars. 

Because they’re blue.

“That is not comforting,” Quentin says on the porch, head tipped back to look at the sky. 

“It really isn’t,” Eliot agrees. “Which is why I think Alice’s suggestion of enjoying our downtime is the best thing I’ve heard all day. I mean, I have all kinds of thoughts after walking in with you sitting next to yourself.” The wicked grin isn’t entirely real, and Eliot’s sure Quentin knows it, but it does the trick. 

“I knew you were thinking that. Granted, so was I. So… exchange of ideas?” Quentin says with a smile of his own. 

“That was a terrible line, Coldwater.” 

“I mean, if it works.” 

“You’re impossible.” 

“Yeah,” Quentin agrees, “but you love me anyway.” 

And that’s the truth, isn’t it? Eliot just hopes their other selves can figure out the same thing, but for now, he has a nerd to drag into bed, and it’s out of his hands anyway. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

The next few days are oddly quiet, almost unnervingly so, but given that they can’t do anything until the night of the full/new moons, it’s also kind of a relief. 

Quentin does his best to focus on his recovery. His memories are coming back, as his body starts to adjust. He’d woken up remembering the Underworld, Penny taking him to his own funeral, and Quentin can admit to himself that Penny’s words running through his mind had been one reason he was ready to assume the worst of his friends. 

Most of the other reasons are down to his own vicious brain, but there is something - the way Julia thought the way to help him was to lay on another obligation, the way Margo directed only mockery his way, or how he doesn’t know what’s behind the way Alice and Eliot look at him anymore - that made him afraid as well. He’s still afraid. Still frightened that it was only necessity that provided that final push that saved him. 

But - maybe it doesn’t matter, because he also remembers Penny breaking character to promise him help if he just cooperates for one minute. He remembers the blackness and the golden fire, and even when he’s weak and wobbly and mute, the real world is better than that ever was. Even when he first fell into the dark and found it comforting, that had only been because he was so, so lost. 

He doesn’t feel lost now. He’s not exactly sure what he does feel, but it’s not that. Even watching the rain pour outside his window, dark grey stormclouds lit by flashes of flame-colored lightning and the occasional blue comet, he doesn’t feel lost. He feels _strange_ , definitely, when he thinks of how the bonfire that had basically been his funeral pyre had turned tokens of his life to ash and lit his friends’ faces. When he thinks of how his voice when he’d been a creature of golden fire had sounded like the crackling of flames compared to the lightning-hum of the Niffins. But not lost, not anymore.

Quentin looks in the mirror and sees golden eyes. He looks at his arms and sees no scars - he doesn’t exactly miss them, given how they came to be, but the lack of them is uncomfortable, reminding him that this is not the body he was born in. And there is the… He thinks of it as a tattoo because it’s too brightly-colored to be anything else, the red braid around his wrist.

He has a flicker of a memory whenever he looks at it, a hand reaching out for his, but apparently his mind isn’t quite ready to tell him everything. The last thing he remembers clearly is the Niffins, Eliot and Margo and himself made of blue flame, how they had chased him, how they caught him. 

Quentin’s body is not his original one but his mind is, and this body is what he has now. So it’s going to obey him, it’s not going to be any weaker than it absolutely has to be. One timeline over, he survived the Seam minus one leg, and he came back from that. He is not his other-self, with shaggy red hair and a steadiness that Quentin frankly envies. But they come from the same place, don’t they?

He goes from sleeping most of the time to having trouble sleeping at all, which is really pretty typical and does more than his identical-except-the-eyes face or the comforting length of his hair does to make him feel himself again. It’s kind of pathetic, but he’s used to contrary feelings and urges, so inconveniently timed insomnia is familiar enough to settle him into these new bones a little.

(He’s still pretty sure his height is a little off, but he thinks he’s a hair taller so that seems like a win, really.)

Anyway. He puts the sleeplessness to use as he used to do - or no, not exactly the same way. Before, Quentin sat up with books, studying ahead as a high school and college student against the times when depression would lay him out flat, leave him unable to study. There’s a reason he still graduated college on time, and while some of that was summer and winter sessions, some of it was also thinking ahead. At Brakebills, he’d practice his spells in his room, or read books from the Cottage collection while tucked away in the reading nook.

Now, he takes his walker and walks the length from his bedroom to the front door, back and forth, back and forth. His knees wobble and want to give out, but he only pauses, hands white-knuckled on the walker until he steadies again. He is _going_ to come back from this.

The door they tell him connects to Alice’s office at the Library opens, Alice herself stepping out. He sees her make a face when she looks out the window to see how late it is, and then she spots him. “Q? What are you doing up?” 

Quentin shrugs a shoulder, making his way to the kitchen counter where he can lean against it and pull his notebook and pen out of the little bag he carries them in. Alice comes over as he’s writing, so that she can see when he shows her. _Can’t sleep, figured I might as well work on my walking._

“You really should try to rest. I could give you a potion…”

Quentin blinks, and then realizes - he never did tell her about that. It was Eliot and Margo who were there for the sleeping potion incident. _Can’t. Sleeping pills give me night terrors and when I tried potions, they made me sleepwalk._ Memorably, he ended up in Eliot’s room one night and Eliot found him curled up on the floor the next morning. That was when they decided he should probably not try potions anymore.

“Oh.” Alice makes a face. “And of course you can’t use spells for more than a couple nights in a row before you either start to become dependent on them or they start having bad side effects like temporary narcolepsy… Damn. I guess it does make sense that you’d practice moving around then. No one to see if you look silly, right?” 

_That’s it exactly,_ Quentin writes, and really, that much is something they’ve always had in common, isn’t it? He hesitates, flipping his pen over and under his fingers, then writes, _How are you, anyway?_

“Tense, mostly - I hate this waiting. We can’t do anything about any of the Niffins until magic’s fixed - no one is sure, but we suspect that even beginning the months of spells to make new boxes is a bad idea before then. And while some of them seem bent on tormenting people - Kady has agreed to coordinate with the Library just this once to help those people find protection, and you don’t want to know how many caveats she put in even for dealing directly with me - they can’t seem to manifest for long.”

Quentin hesitates, but he’d feel worse if he didn’t ask. _Charlie?_

Alice swallows hard. “I don’t know. He’s not coming after anyone, which is good, but… I don’t know.”

_I’m sorry, Alice. I hope… I hope you can find a way to save him this time._

“He wouldn’t want it any more than I did, and I don't know what to do with that.” A shadow passes over her face then and she asks, “Did you want it? Really?”

_Yes. I didn’t think I could have it, but I wanted it, and I can’t actually thank any of you enough._

Alice’s face twists, and she blinks rapidly a few times before calming. Quentin is suddenly, vividly reminded of the last two times they were in this spot, when he’d given a speech that was bleak as fuck, looking back. And then, of course, he’d asked her to try again. When part of him had known it was a mistake as soon as her kiss left him cold, but he didn’t say so, couldn’t say so. It would be too cruel, and also he hoped it would change when he felt less numb. 

What a shitty thing to have done, in hindsight. 

And the time before that, after the park, when he’d thought they were done for good. When she’d asked him if he was Team Monster now and he’d said he was Team Eliot, and fucking hell, how did he get things this twisted up? 

“I don’t know about anyone else, but don’t thank me for saving you, Q. I’m glad you’re happier about it than I was, but I don’t need your thanks.” 

_What do you need then? Or want?_

Alice turns away from him, her hands curling into fists. “Tell me you didn’t agree that we would be a team already planning to fucking - take away my choices again, and make me watch you die. Can you tell me that?” 

Actually, yes, he can. Whatever else happened in those minutes at the Seam, Quentin absolutely can say that he didn’t go there intending to do anything but throw away the Monster Twins in their bottles. So he writes that, and waits for Alice to look back to where she can see it. When she does, he sees some bit of tension leave her. “Eliot thinks you killed yourself. He never - said as much. But I’m pretty sure he thinks it was intentional.”

 _I did,_ Quentin admits, even though it makes her flinch. He’s never had much luck with therapy but his third therapist told him that lying to himself about his depression was a dangerous game and he does try to follow that bit of advice. _But it wasn’t all that straightforward. It was more like I was too tired to remember why I was running, it was my depression winning but it wasn’t planned. It’s hard to explain, I’m sorry._

“Stop apologizing!” Alice hisses, then shakes her head. “God. Seriously, just stop that. How did you get that bad, Q? How did - did you even understand when you asked me to try again? Because I thought about it later and it was so random, and you were talking so strangely, and I should have questioned you then but I thought - if we could just be us again, maybe it would make things better.” 

_So did I,_ Quentin writes. _I meant it, Alice, but not for the right reasons. You still seemed to care when it felt like no one else did, and I thought if we dated again you’d stay. I thought if I could make you happy it would make me happy._

There, in black and white (or rather, in purple and white, because Julia tried to make him smile with a collection of gel pens like they were back in middle school and it had actually worked), the truth of it makes Quentin furious with himself. He expects Alice to be just as angry - she has every right - but instead it’s like she relaxes even more, looking at him with steady blue eyes like it’s the first time in a long time she’s really seen him. 

He feels like it might be the first time in a long time either of them has really seen the other. Because what she’d said, her reasons for saying yes, they hadn’t been all that far off his reasons for offering, had they? God, he hadn’t expected his heart to break for Alice Quinn all over again, whatever happened between them, but that’s what’s happening now. 

_I fucked up,_ he continues writing when she doesn’t say anything. _I fucked up at the Seam and I fucked up here in this room when I was talking to you. I swear I wasn’t trying to use you, or hurt you, but I know I did. I know I took your choices away at the Seam and I can’t regret that you were safe, but I know it was wrong anyway._

“It’s not like I didn’t know, deep down, that something was wrong. You were talking about letting shit go and then asking to try again, hours after you backed away from me kissing you like it was the last thing you wanted,” Alice says, her eyes on Quentin’s notepad and his hand resting beside it. Or maybe his wrist, with its red tattoo. “I love you, and you love me, but maybe it hasn’t really been _in love_ for either of us for a long time.”

She looks up at him. “We just keep trying to make a thing fit that doesn’t. That _should_ , by any measure, but _doesn’t_. And if we keep trying, we will hate each other for real.”

Quentin looks at her and he has a hazy memory of hovering above his own body, lost and confused, guided by a silver light that seemed to smell like lemons, even though he had no nose. Now, letting his fingers brush hers on the counter, he tastes tart lemonade. But he also remembers - a hand reaching for his, silver rings on long fingers and the taste of sweet spice. 

He remembers everything in a rush, and he needs time to process it, but he understands now. He understands why he is here, understands that the two people he would have burned himself up for (did, the second time) are the ones who saved him. And that it’s all one kind of love or another, that broke him so that he couldn’t save himself, but is also why they were able to save him instead. 

He is not _in_ love with Alice anymore, and he was wrong to try to turn what he feels now back into romance. Even if she was also wrong to accept it, he made that first move, and so he was wrong first. But he does love her, there is a piece of him that will always be hers. And maybe that’s all right, maybe a part of her is still his, maybe there is something new for both of them to be found in that, if they can get out of their own way.

 _I don’t want to hate you,_ he writes, blinking back tears. _I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t know exactly what we can have, it’s all so messy, but I don’t want that._

“Neither do I,” Alice says. “I’m taking Zelda’s offer to rebuild and reform the Library. So I won’t be around all the time. But I’d like to find out what we have when we’re not trying to date.” She takes his hand, and he’s reminded of how gentle she’d been with him at the Drowned Garden. It makes him want to cry. “I am so glad we got you back. Watching you die was one of the worst moments of my life. I never want to hurt like that again. So we will work out how to be friends. And you need to heal, and take better care.”

Quentin thinks of watching Alice erupt in blue flames, her body sprawled lifelessly on the grass. The smell of ozone and blood in the air. That had been one of the worst moments of his life, and he made her live it with their roles swapped. But now they are both standing here, in their second bodies (at least partly built by each other’s efforts), with second chances. Second chances that neither of them ought to waste. 

It makes him ask a question that never occurred to him before. 

Or it would, except that footsteps distract him just as he’s writing, _Fogg told me something on my first day and I’m starting to wonder -_

Quentin looks up to see Eliot standing in the hallway. Oh. He thinks of sweet spices again and wonders just how much of a reckoning he is due for tonight. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Eliot actually heard the last bit of what Alice said, without really meaning to. So he knows that he’s not walking in on a romantic reconciliation. It looks intimate, in a way, when he sees Alice and Quentin standing close together, but part of that is clearly so that Alice can read Quentin’s notepad. As for the rest… 

He’s oddly reminded of looking at Other-Eliot with Other-Margo, an intimacy more like that, if much more cautious and unsure, than that of lovers. He doesn’t know what to make of that and in truth it really isn’t his business. Even if - even if he and Q - it still won’t be _exactly_ his business, beyond making sure he’s not the “other man”, as it were. Still, he smiles a not-entirely-real smile. “Am I interrupting?” 

“No,” Alice says at the same time as Quentin shakes his head. “We were just clearing the air, and Q was about to ask me something about Fogg. Maybe you’ll know if I don’t?” Alice continues.

Eliot comes over to join them, sitting on one of the counter stools. After a moment, Quentin does the same, and a little surprisingly, Alice boosts herself up to sit on the actual counter. Quentin fiddles with his pen for a moment. _We didn’t wake you up, did we?_ he writes, sliding it toward Eliot. 

“No, I was up. The fucking storm,” he says, remembering a night in another life when he admitted that while he’s not exactly afraid of thunderstorms, they always fuck up his mood. One quirk still left from Indiana, unfortunately. “Why are you up? I know Alice is on a weird clock thanks to the Library but you still need to be careful.” 

Quentin makes a face and Alice actually laughs a bit. While Quentin bends his head over his notepad, Eliot shares a little smile with her. This is, after all, what they wanted. Their boy back, and coming back to himself. The particulars didn’t matter when getting him back came first, and even now they’re not the most important thing. It’s nice. 

_My body has decided to show it’s adjusting by going back to shitty sleep patterns. I figured I’d practice walking since it’s better than staring at my ceiling._

“Fair enough,” Eliot says, because he’s very familiar with Quentin’s fucked sleeping patterns. “So, what’s this about Fogg?”

Quentin’s eyes are golden now rather than brown, but Eliot still recognizes the skittish look in them all too well, and the lip biting would give away the game if he didn’t. Quentin bends over his notepad again, hair falling forward like a curtain to hide his face. When he starts to write, it’s in a rush, the letters messy like he needs to get it all out as fast as possible. But it’s still legible, and as he reads, Eliot’s blood runs cold.

_At my entrance interview, Fogg said my depression was because I didn’t have magic. That I knew about it subconsciously but couldn’t find it and that made me depressed. He said that at Brakebills I shouldn’t need my meds. So I gave them to him. And I never went back on them. And when I was in the Underworld Branch with Penny, I told him I thought the worst of it all went away after Brakebills and he didn’t… he didn’t answer me, he tried to convince me that being sad to leave everyone meant I didn’t kill myself. But that’s not how it works, and I know that, part of it all is thinking being dead is better for the people you love and he more or less told me that too. And he reiterated the whole magic comes from pain thing, does that mean I shouldn’t take meds because it will weaken my magic? I should have asked before but I thought I was OK until I really wasn’t._

Eliot is still searching for the words when Alice says, in a low vicious tone that would probably have made her Niffin-self proud, “If being the Head Librarian gives me any way to investigate that man for misconduct, I am absolutely going to use it, because what the _fuck_ , Quentin.”

Quentin blinks wide eyes at her, all startled deer in headlights as Alice hops off the counter in favor of pacing in front of them. “You told me about your depression. We talked about how the emotion bottles could make you worse. It never occurred to you to ask about what Fogg told you even after we knew he was a liar and a self-medicating drunk?” she demands, and OK, maybe Eliot can take his time finding words because Alice has some right now. She can take first swing. 

_I didn’t see any good reason why he’d lie about that. And for a while I did feel like I was better. I really did. It was just that when I stopped feeling better I spiraled really fast, and I was too far gone before I realized._

“I don’t think Henry Fogg needs a good reason to lie to people,” Eliot says, voice tight. “Look what he did to Julia this time around - just on Jane’s say-so. God fucking knows what the pair of them cooked up for us in Timelines 2-39, we might know how 23 turned out but not how it started.” Also, he’s vaguely heard… something about an evil Todd and Fogg from Timeline 17 showing up at Brakebills, but that isn’t really his problem or part of his point. “For all we know, Fogg told you that as an experiment to see if it did up your power level. Which, frankly, I’d guess the opposite.” 

Quentin looks like this idea never occurred to him, which makes Eliot want to shake him but also wrap him up in a blanket and hide him from everything. These contradictory instincts are not exactly an unfamiliar combination when it comes to Quentin, though. “Quentin, all the shit you’ve seen me and Margo knock back, the fact that I know we told you a ton of stories about the Naturalists, why the fuck didn’t you ask one of us? Margo offered you Ambien when you had that insomnia problem!” 

He wants to ask, why didn’t you mention this over the course of fifty fucking years, but actually Eliot kind of thinks he did. There’s something about this conversation that gives him deja vu, and for some reason he’s thinking about a tea that smelled like hay which Quentin took to drinking, but he can’t quite… 

Some of the memories are like that. Some are crystal-clear, some are hazy like childhood memories but accessible, and some are nothing more than flashes, feelings, called up by something happening in the present. Magic being the little bitch that it is, of course something so crucial as Quentin going off the meds he needed to be as safe as possible would fall into the third category. 

Quentin seems to be thinking along the same lines because while Alice is still pacing, silent now but with a look on her face that kind of makes Eliot think she could single-handedly create a Magical Pedagogy Review Board, Quentin goes back to his notepad. _We had this conversation before, didn’t we?_ he writes, sliding the pad to where Eliot can see it. 

“I think so, yeah. But we have actual meds, and potions designed to ease the side effects of medicine, so it’s better than that hay stuff you were drinking.” 

_It smelled like hay but it was the color of blueberries, I remember that too._

“Well, I can’t promise the potion in question won’t also be that color, or an equally weird one, but you drink Kool-Aid. I caught you making a pitcher of neon green Kool-Aid once. I don’t think you can talk about ridiculous colors. Not that I can either, with my cocktails, but we’re not talking about me right now.”

“You two are very strange,” Alice says, coming back over and catching up. “But Eliot’s right. One of my aunt Genji’s old apprentices took up medicinal potions. Most of them are supplemental to standard medicines, or designed for people who can’t take those. I - my brother was interested in it. He thought he might study that sort of thing.” 

It’s the first time Eliot can remember Alice mentioning her brother as himself, before he Niffined out. He wonders how she’s dealing with knowing he’s out there again, but while they may be friends now, theirs is not the kind of relationship where he thinks he can ask, even if he knew what words to offer.

“I knew a hedge with the same kind of project,” he adds instead, staying on topic, and he shrugs at Quentin’s surprise. “The reason I was a dick about hedges in general is because I’ve met a decent number of them. It was generally not a good impression.”

 _Also, you’re kind of a snob,_ Quentin points out. Alice bites her lip to hide her laugh, and Eliot only shrugs again.

“It’s part of the vibe,” he says lightly, all King of the Cottage again, for just a moment. “You like it.”

_Well, yeah, but that wasn’t my point. So anyway, potions and meds together? That’ll really work?_

“That’s the thing,” Alice says. “They don’t really teach it at Brakebills because Brakebills is pretty focused on pure magic. It’s more the sort of thing you learn from mentors or relatives, which is why mentor week is so important. But magic on its own doesn’t fix much. Combining it with normal innovations - medicine or tech or whatever - is what gets you best results.”

Her voice sounds just a little unlike her own, and Eliot can dimly remember Charlie Quinn, also a resident of the Cottage, a blond boy who always seemed to be laughing, playing the class clown not unlike how Eliot and Margo played benevolent rulers. He’d been a first year then, largely indifferent to the third years, so it’s a vague memory at best. But he wonders if Alice is echoing something behind the clown act. 

She leaves after that, muttering something about needing to make her sleep patterns behave, and then it’s just Eliot and Quentin in the dimly-lit kitchen, like this is four years ago at the Cottage with both of them caught up by insomnia. Eliot drums his fingers on the counter, and then says, “You know we were just worried about you, right? We weren’t trying to shut you out, Q.” 

Quentin studies him for a moment, and Eliot - he’d been unsettled by the eyes at first, but now, in the dim light, all he can think is that the gold of them makes Quentin even more unfairly pretty, and honestly, who decided that was allowed?

_I know, El. Other-me and other-you made some good arguments. I can’t imagine how I’d have been if our places were swapped. Just… please. I didn’t come back from the void to wait in the magic and hope only to just wait here. I have my life back, thanks to you and Alice and the people you got to help. I can’t ever thank you enough, but I need to actually live in the world now that I’m part of it again. Does that make sense?_

“First, you don’t need to thank me. Bringing you back - I couldn’t not try, Q,” Eliot says. “But that’s - I want to take care of you. But not in ways that hurt you. So… let me worry, and I’ll listen when you have an objection?” 

_That seems fair,_ Quentin writes, and Eliot should - he should tell him the rest, he should tell him how much he’s missed him, how much he loves him. But the words won’t come. He thinks of the letter still tucked away in his things. Maybe he’ll just give it to Q anyway, let it say what he doesn’t quite trust to his voice.

“Want to watch a movie?” he suggests instead, because it’s a normal can’t-sleep activity and he thinks they could both use some normal. Since more truth isn’t on the table yet, at least they can try for a little bit of their normal.

Also, it’s an excuse, once they’re on the couch, to stretch out and pull Quentin to lie on his chest. Quentin makes a humming sound - he can’t talk but he can make sounds? - and settles with his ear pressed to Eliot’s heart. Eliot twists a hand and brings a fleece blanket from where it’s draped on the gold chair, covering them both. 

Later, he never does remember the movie they watched even though he picked it. He just remembers the feel of Quentin’s soft hair against his nose and lips when he bends his head. The warm weight of Quentin, alive and real again, still and always a miracle. Even if it’s a miracle Eliot forced into reality, with more help than he deserved, from sheer fucking stubbornness. 

They both must fall asleep at some point, only to be woken in the morning sunlight by a tired but amused Kady, who has apparently come back some time in the night. Quentin huffs and cuddles back into Eliot’s chest, clearly not yet ready to face the day. Personally, Eliot agrees, and holds him a little tighter.

This is a start, isn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	9. The Corner of First and Amistad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is softness and rain and confessions, and the Julias are up to something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope this finds you well! 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include some references to Quentin's funeral in 4.13 and also to Q 40b's awareness of not being in his original body. I don't think the latter can quite be called dysphoria but it might be close enough for some. Also, there is non-consensual use of magic to do a minor memory alteration and to keep someone asleep. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers (I have acquired new ones lately!) and especially Maii for reading my drafts.

**Eliot 40b**

Not much really changes for the next few days, because escaped Niffins aside, their plans remain basically the same. And there’s only so many times in a day you can practice a set of tuts, even ones you have to get right to save the world. Four worlds. Whatever. They do move the world-portal mirrors to the penthouses, putting curtains in front of them so that they aren’t inadvertently spying on each other. According to both Alices, there’s an alarm for if either side needs to talk to the other, just tap the frame three times, but so far they haven’t needed it. 

Quentin is actually doing more magic than any of them right now, practicing little spells so that he’ll have some magical stamina built up when the big night comes. Eliot finds himself spending more time just watching him than anything else - typically Quentin works with Julia or Alice when it comes to that. Mostly Julia, because Alice is rarely around. Which is how Eliot winds up sitting at the kitchen counter watching Quentin and Julia on the couch doing a spell with lights that is apparently reenacting a baseball game, when Margo sits next to him and pokes his arm. 

“El, I wasn’t gonna push but I need to know, are you coming back to Fillory with me?” she asks, pitching her voice low so they don’t catch the attention of the duo on the couch.

The arrangement made with Fen is that she is now High Queen - which works because of the three High Kings Fillory had before the Dark King’s three hundred years of bullshit, only Margo had been selected by the people. Also, she’s the one who killed Plover. Eliot isn’t clear on how exactly they plan to divide their duties, only that High Queen is basically equal to High King now in a way he and Margo had usually treated it, only to find that no one else really thought it was. 

The most telling thing, for Eliot, is that not only does he not know how Margo and Fen have arranged things, he doesn’t care. In an abstract way he does - Fillory saved him, and he will always love it on some level and want the best for it, but he was very decisively voted out. And he’d had nothing to do with defeating Plover. He’d been focused on Quentin, and he’s still - 

Julia laughs, bright and happy, and Eliot looks over to see Quentin grinning back at her. His heart turns over at the sight. 

“Eliot,” Margo says again, and he looks back, vaguely guilty. But Margo is actually smiling, a strange sad smile that’s actually kind of awful. “You aren’t, are you? El, what if he - you don’t know that he wants… Just because Quinn cut him off…” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Eliot says. “It’s not just about Q, Margo, it’s about me too. I could be your advisor, sure, but on what grounds? I didn’t do shit for Fillory this time. I didn’t even want to, the second I knew there was a way to save Q that was my priority. They voted me out and I… You said it was your country and it is. You’re the one who keeps fighting for it. I did too, but I’m starting to think I was fighting for it long enough for it to belong to people who really loved it for itself, like you and Fen. It saved me, being High King, and I love Fillory for that. I even loved it for Q, for the storybook version he loved. But you two are the ones who really, truly, love that place for itself. I don’t think I belong there now, Bambi.” 

“You belong with me,” Margo says, blinking rapidly. 

Eliot finds himself thinking of an apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone, where he was a guest and not a resident but still… it was a life that was almost his, if he’d been the Eliot on the other side of the split. The truth is, he doesn’t want Fillory anymore. He doesn’t belong there, even if Margo does. “We are always going to be a duo, but I think… we might have to keep doing that long-distance. It’s not for me, Margo. Yeah, I want to - I want Q, as my partner or my best friend that I hopefully get to cuddle and share living space with, but I just want to be here. I don’t want to go back to Fillory, it’s not for me anymore. I think I need to figure out who I am here.” 

“What are you gonna do, go finish things out at Brakebills and start teaching there?” Margo asks, sharp and bitter. 

“Me? A teacher? God no, I’d only end up teaching if I was miserable and alone with nothing better to do,” Eliot says, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I’d never open up our little B&B without you but… something. I don’t know yet. But that’s the thing, Bambi. I want to find out. And I want to find out here.”

“Is this about the domestic duo on the other side?” Margo asks, and Eliot wonders if it’s easier for her, to think that he’s staying because he wants to be with Quentin, and not for his own sake at all. 

“It’s about a lot of things, and seeing them together, having my Q back, is part of it. But, Margo… This is about me,” Eliot tells her, because it’s not fair to lie to her even if she seems to want him to. They’ve - they’ve done too much of that. He can’t help thinking that some of their misunderstandings have been about that, and he doesn’t think more of it is the best way to repair what’s gone wrong between them. 

“I was voted out, and thanks to some of the shit the Monster pulled, I was also declared dead. Fen told me, she said we’re not married by any definition anymore. I feel like those are some pretty clear messages, Margo. I hated being stuck there, hated being afraid you’d all leave and being proved half right, even after I came to love Fillory I hated that part. I swear, I will carry an enchanted mirror everywhere so that we can talk any time, but I can’t - I don’t want to go back. In some ways it’s that simple.” 

“Damn you,” Margo says, but she sounds more sad than angry. “I don’t want to keep doing this without you… but I want you happy, baby. So we’re gonna enchant a pair of compact mirrors, and that way we’re literally in each other’s pockets, and we’ll go from there.” She gets up and pulls him into a hug, and Eliot wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head. 

“You two OK over there?” Julia asks, looking curious. 

“I think we are, actually,” Eliot says, and he starts to believe it when Margo doesn’t correct him, only hugs him a little tighter. He can’t quite read the look in Quentin’s golden eyes, but when their gazes meet, Q smiles at him, so it can’t be too bad. 

“I have to go shopping, I have mirrors to buy,” Margo announces, and then she’s out the door. A few minutes later, Julia gets a text and gets up, going back toward the bedrooms. Eliot hesitates only a moment before joining Quentin on the couch. He settles with a little space between them just in case, but stretches his arm across the back of the couch so his fingers brush Quentin’s shoulder. Quentin looks over at him, then tips carefully sideways till he’s tucked into Eliot’s side. 

Eliot, not about to complain, shifts his arm so it’s wrapped around Quentin’s shoulders. He can’t help thinking that if this is all he has, this cuddly friendship from before everything happened, it will still be a fucking miracle.

Quentin scribbles something on his notebook, then holds it up so that Eliot can see.  _ Are you going back to Fillory? After the spell and all?  _

“No,” Eliot says, and to his own surprise he feels a tension in Quentin fade, so that he melts into Eliot’s hold all the more. “That’s what Margo and I were talking about, actually. She asked me to come back with her but I’m not… It’s not what I want, and I have the choice now, so I made it.” He leans his cheek against Quentin’s soft hair. “I’m not sure what I do want yet, but I’m going to stay here. Do you… have any idea? What you want, I mean.” 

Quentin huffs, and Eliot listens to Quentin’s pen scritching against the notebook page, then blinks at it when Quentin holds it up to bring the writing into focus.  _ I’m still kind of shocked that I’m back. I know I don’t want to stay here, too many memories, but I don’t exactly have a choice right now. _

Eliot remembers Other-Quentin’s advice about getting Q out of the penthouse as soon as possible. But he’s not sure where they can go either, really. Still… There’s one thing, at least, that he can find out. “I think I might look for somewhere to live that’s not here. You want in?” He asks it casually because it’s the only way he can get the words out, and the look he gets is so familiar from a darker-eyed, older Quentin. 

I could call you on bullshit but I won’t, that look says, and Eliot’s heart twists in his chest at the sight of it. He remembers seeing it a hundred thousand times, remembers the feeling of his own features shifting into a similar expression. So much of their life at the Mosaic is sense memory, muscle memory, fleeting images without their full stories attached, and then some of it is as crystal-clear as the day it happened.

He’s never known what to do with it.

_ You sure you wanna be stuck with an invalid like me? _ Quentin writes, unaware of the way Eliot’s thoughts have turned.

“Always,” Eliot says, and that would be true at any time, but it comes out now in a voice more serious than he’d planned thanks to the old memories at the front of his mind. Quentin blinks, opens his mouth, then scowls when his throat works but no sound comes out. He takes up his notepad and Eliot sees his own name appear in a hurried scrawl before the door opens again. 

… One of these days, he’s going to ask Kady if she has a fucking radar for interrupting things with him and Q, because this is starting to get ridiculous.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

Quentin knows Eliot is frustrated by Kady’s timing. He feels Eliot tense up a bit as the door opens, and if he tilts his head a little he can see his jaw clench even with the beard. 

He’s not sure what he thinks of that beard. It’s a good look on El - most things are - but it and his hair are a little too unkempt for it to just be a new style. It worries Quentin and it pinches him with guilt, because he suspects…

But that’s not a thought for right this minute. 

He sits up a little, not pulling away from Eliot, just shifting so that when he holds up the notepad, it should catch Kady’s eye. _ Can I ask a favor?  _

Kady looks a little surprised, but she perches on the arm of the couch. “Sure, what’s up?”

“Seconding that actually,” Eliot chimes in. Quentin rolls his eyes, making a face at Eliot that makes him laugh softly. “What, you don’t expect me to be nosy, Q? You have met me.”

Quentin hums in agreement - it’s annoying that he can make sounds but somehow words just don’t come. And there’s no good reason for it either. He can only dimly remember the healer they’d had in to see him after he’d finally come around, but apparently there’s no brain or vocal cord damage that would explain his muteness. It’s just… a thing… that’s happening. Weird side effect, like his eyes. Julia says the healer figured his voice might come back on its own, or might not, but there was no  _ medical  _ reason for it. 

He read about selective mutism once, and he suspects what’s wrong with him is probably some kind of... subconscious trauma response, either to having been trapped in the magic - and the heads of not one but two of his own counterparts - or to being brought back to a living body after being dead. But there’s nothing he can do either way except ride it out; figuring out what exactly triggered it is probably impossible and unlikely to help anyway. 

So Quentin’s decided what he ought to do is figure out how to compensate for it in the meantime. Which leads him to the favor he wants from Kady.  _ You know sign language, right? If I wanted to learn, any advice on where to start? _

“They can’t fix the voice thing?” Kady asks. “I’m out of the loop on that, sorry.” 

_ No, Jules says the healer can’t find a reason for it, so I have to wait it out. Alice was talking about this telepathic projection spell I might be able to use, but I’m thinking through all my options right now,  _ Quentin writes.  _ Also, can’t use spells with muggles. _

“I’ve heard of that one,” Eliot says thoughtfully. “There was a third year my first year - she was a Physical kid, her boyfriend was a psychic, they used to work together on this handcrafted jewelry stuff with different psychic-type spells built in. I think you can only use them for a few hours at a time, though.”

“Yeah, I know those two. Tom and Clara, they’re in business with that shit now,” Kady says. “Good call on wanting options, Coldwater, I would too in your shoes. There’s this woman I know out in Arizona, magic-user but no one can figure out if she’s a hedge or went to a magic school. Anyway, she’s got this password-locked video channel, she teaches different languages including multiple sign options. It’s locked because she incorporates spells to help people learn faster. I keep in touch with her partly to keep my signing in practice, actually. I’ll get you the site and the latest password, and once you get started, you can hit me up to practice.” 

Quentin blinks. _ Yeah? _ He’s barely had a conversation with Kady that lasted longer than ten minutes, so he’d sort of figured she’d point him at some books or websites and that would be that. Still better, in his mind, than just Googling stuff and hoping for the best, but actual help is kind of a surprise. A nice one, though.  _ I’d appreciate that. _

Kady smiles, just a little. “Call it a welcome back, huh? And next time bring me along, I’ll just shoot the fucker.” 

Quentin actually grins, to his own surprise, and Eliot laughs softly in his ear.  _ No next times here, I think I’m retired, but duly noted.  _

“I think we’re both retired. After the whole apocalypse prevention thing,” Eliot says.

“It’s probably a miracle it took us this long to have a full-blown one of those, with the shitty luck we’ve had,” Kady says as she gets up, stretching. “Anyway, I have calls to make before this shit goes down - somehow I am now the cooperative magic organizer-in-chief - so I’ll see you later.” 

Eliot says goodbye as Quentin waves, and then they’re alone again. Quentin sighs, tucking himself back down against Eliot’s side. “Sign language, huh?” Eliot murmurs. 

_ I have to do something, El, _ Quentin points out.  _ I can’t just write everything forever. Though I guess it’ll only really help with people who know it/are willing to learn it. _

“I will,” Eliot says firmly. “If you go for it, we’ll learn together, you and me. Julia will too, I’m sure, probably Alice. Margo’s going back to Fillory but we’re going to mirror chat, she could too.” 

Quentin doesn’t want to say that he’s pretty sure Margo blames him for Eliot’s possession - she’s barely spoken to him since he came back, and he still remembers that the last things she said to him directly before his death outside of strategy conversations had both been mocking. Then again, he also remembers waking up under the blindfold to people reading to him, more than once - and one of those times, it had been Margo reading  _ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, _ so maybe he’s overthinking it.

He hasn’t really been sure where he stands with Margo since the day he’d announced he would stay at Blackspire, when she’d been all for killing the Monster instead. If only that had fucking worked. After, they’d been rushing around to keep the Monster from killing them and then she’d been gone again.

He still remembers the burst of hope when he’d seen her at the door, so like the one when he’d opened the door to find Julia. Those hopes had been alike, too, in how they’d been dashed. In how Julia hadn’t understood why he couldn’t let Eliot go, in how he’d been sure Margo would feel the nightmare he’d lived and yet she’d barely looked at him.

He’s sure most of it is somehow his own fault, but it aches. 

“Q? You OK?” Eliot asks, and when Quentin shifts enough to give him a questioning look Eliot shrugs, absently tucking a bit of hair back behind Quentin’s ear. The touch sends a jolt through Quentin’s system, which is fucking irrational given they’re curled up on the couch together, but it’s happened before. “You went off in your head somewhere,” Eliot explains. 

Ah, shit. Technically, Quentin knows he can tell Eliot just about anything. In practice, he feels a bad kind of squirmy inside when he thinks about talking about his weird mixed feelings with regards to Julia and  _ especially  _ Margo. He is sort of dimly aware of a tension only just fading between Eliot and Margo that he’s sure isn’t at all his business, but the thing is he… doesn’t know what to say. 

_ Just thinking it’s probably a bit shitty to ask everyone to learn a new language for me. _ It may not be exactly what he’d been thinking, but it is also true, and one of the reasons he’s not sure the sign language option is the one he’s going to go with.

Eliot’s eyes flash. “No, it’s not. Would you think that if you had to learn it for one of us?” 

Well, no, but that’s different. Quentin doesn’t actually have time to write that, though, because Eliot continues, “And if you’re going to say it’s different, I might actually hit you with the notebook, Quentin, because it’s not. You’re ours, we got you back and we’re keeping you, and if we have to learn a new language that is - that’s not a big ask, Q, being able to communicate without carrying accessories is not an unfair request.”

_ Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with my voice back, _ Quentin writes, sighing. 

“Maybe,” Eliot says, running his fingers through Quentin’s hair. Idly, Quentin wonders just who Eliot made sure his new body had long hair for. And then he shuts down that line of thought because he doesn’t want to think too hard about being in a brand new body. “I’d like that, I miss your voice. Not anywhere as much as you do, but still. But if not, wanting to be able to talk to us is something you have every right to want.”

_ You heard other-me talk plenty, didn’t you?  _

“I did, but… He’s not you. They’re not us.” 

Quentin nods, because he understands that. He didn’t talk too much to Other-Eliot, but even if they weren’t sporting different styles, to a point, even without the way Other-Eliot walks a little stiffly on a damaged leg, he’d never mistake them for each other. He can’t quite pinpoint the difference, but he knows it’s there. 

Still…  _ They’re not us. _ There had been another ‘them’, once, that Eliot said after wasn’t really them. And Quentin remembers now, that darkness in the center of the mind - but what if he hadn’t understood what Eliot was implying but not saying?

He wishes he knew how to ask.

He might have tried anyway, but Margo comes back, and she and Eliot go off together. Quentin suspects they’re going to do the spell for their mirrors, but if he needs to know he figures Eliot will tell him later. So he just stretches out on the couch with one of the books he found - it’s part of a series, and he’s on the third, called  _ Daja’s Book _ \- until he drifts off, the small paperback falling pages-down to his chest. 

Quentin stirs at one point, hearing voices. Blinking sleepy eyes, he sees Julia near the patio doors talking to three other women… actually, no, he sees two Julias talking to two other women. The only obvious difference, besides their clothes, is that the light under their skin is different. One has purple light like his Julia, so he assumes that’s her, and the other… Also purple but shot through with silver. 

The other two women are unfamiliar but one is dark-skinned with curling black hair, wearing what looks like a white  _ Greek chiton _ . The other woman has poker-straight white hair and her skin is - it looks blue but that’s not possible, is it? Both of them shimmer with silver light.

Silver light… and Other-Julia is a demigoddess, someone said so…

Then the white-haired woman catches Quentin’s eyes. He sees that her eyes are even more golden than his, a yellow-gold bright enough to  _ glow  _ and then…

When he wakes up next, he thinks it was just a dream.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

The problem now is that there’s nothing left to do but wait. Eliot wouldn’t necessarily call himself the kind of man who is impatient for things to happen, but he would very much like to get this over with. Still, it’s better to do it right, especially given that failure means they’re all fucked, and also dead. 

“Did Other-Wicker ever tell us what’s going on with the Fillorys and their moon cycles?” he asks with two days to go, when it’s just him, Quentin, and Margo at the apartment in Brooklyn. 

“It’s less crucial, because the only ones who are casting from there are me, other-me, and the two Joshes,” Margo says, shrugging. “She said their circumstances are accounted for and not going to cause trouble, which is the important part. Since most people are casting here on Earth somewhere, that’s the relevant part. So she says.” 

“Jules does know her stuff,” Quentin says from where he’s curled up on the little window seat they have, sketchbook in hand and spelled notebook next to him, his prosthetic removed for comfort and braced against the wall in easy reach. “And so do both Alices, so between them I’m sure it’s all right. I’d be more worried that Zelda and Alice’s friend Sheila are going to cast from the Library, but apparently that’ll be fine too.” 

“I just want it over with,” Eliot grumbles. 

“I hear that,” Margo sighs, flopping back so her head is in Eliot’s lap. “Hey, El.” 

“Hi, Bambi,” Eliot laughs, raising his eyebrows at her. 

“Can you two, like, stay like that for a bit?” Quentin asks, and when they both look over at him there’s a strange intent look in his eyes. Eliot, who recognizes Quentin in artist mode, grins slowly as Margo laughs, delighted. 

“Oh, hush, not like you don’t both know you’re gorgeous together,” Quentin grumbles, charcoal already in hand. For a little while, it feels almost like old times, Eliot and Margo all but outright posing for the sake of the effect as much as their comfort, but it’s different to do this for Quentin. They have before, to watch the first year boy he had been stutter and blush but still keep looking with a hint of usually-hidden boldness. But like this, for Quentin as artist, drawing them because they’re  _ them  _ as much as being pretty… 

Eliot knows what they all look like, put on the page in Quentin’s charcoals and pastels. He knows how whatever Quentin sees comes out in his work so that Eliot, at least, sometimes feels he only half recognizes himself when rendered on sketchbook pages. He tries not to dwell on the faint sounds of Quentin drawing, instead talking to Margo quietly about nothing in particular. 

Beyond the blackout curtains, the sunlight is still the wrong color, but for an afternoon, Eliot forgets that, relaxed with his best friend in his lap and his partner drawing them both like he can’t help but do it. Later, Eliot will wonder if Margo and Q somehow conspired to be distracting, but for now he just enjoys the quiet. 

If the world ends in a few days, at least they get one last quiet afternoon together. And if not, with Margo in Fillory more often than not these days are getting rarer. 

“I’m going to hold you to the research bitches offer, by the way,” Margo says at one point, absently playing with Eliot’s hand and the moonstone ring he wears. 

“Oh? I expected no less, Bambi, but anything in particular?” 

“Yeah. I want to stop being a werewolf.” 

“That is a very understandable goal, and I’m happy to help,” Eliot says, and means it, partly just because if he were Margo he’d want it gone too, but also... He can’t prove it, but he has a hunch that some of the weirdness of the time immediately post-Monster, when it came to Margo with both him and Q, somehow is related to her lycanthropy. He hasn’t said anything because he has no real reason to think it, but still.

“Same here,” Quentin adds, and Eliot looks up to see him putting the leg back on so he can walk over. “You guys wanna see?” 

The sketch is soft edged, so that Eliot and Margo’s outlines blur into the half-sketched background. They look dreamy, the colors soft, and they both look so open, it’s unnerving. Because of course it’s exactly how Eliot had felt, with no one but Margo and Q to see, and one look at Margo’s face tells him the same. 

But being  _ seen and preserved _ like this - it’s not something Eliot ever gets used to.

Before he can say anything, a low chiming fills the air. “Ah, shit,” Quentin mutters, and instead of getting up, he reaches for the crack between sofa cushions like he’s about to pull a coin from behind someone’s ear, only instead his magical notebook disappears from the window seat and is being pulled out from the couch instead. 

“Card trick summoning, don’t see that every day,” Margo teases. 

“Hey, it works, don’t knock it,” Quentin says, flipping to the latest page and frowning down at the writing. “OK, Alice, that’s not great but I don’t think it was an emergency for us, was it?” he asks the notebook as if it can answer, though all Eliot sees him write on the page is  _ thanks for the heads-up. _

“What?” Eliot and Margo say together. Quentin sets the book aside, pushing a hand through his hair. 

“Apparently there’s a growing ripple effect in the other forty timelines, newly-made 41 included? Their magic’s going weird, and Alice thinks if we fuck this up they might slowly implode too. Which, you know, great, added pressure?”

“Why?” Eliot asks as Margo sits up. “How is this spreading like this?” 

“It’s gotta be the Time Key, right? All the timelines except 41 were made because of it, and 41 literally spun off us before our a and b split,” Margo says, thoughtful. 

“That’s what it looks like,” Quentin says. “But, again, I’m not sure what she thinks we can do about it. She said she prayed to Julia to tell her about it, and got a message back that it’s being taken care of, which is… interesting, I guess.” 

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with what we’re doing,” Eliot says, frowning. 

“Here we go again,” Margo mutters, and the worst part, in Eliot’s mind, is that she’s right. But at least it’s all going to be over soon, one way or another.

It had fucking  _ better  _ be.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

Quentin wakes up in the darkness because the room is glowing silver. Frowning, he sits up and realizes Eliot hasn’t so much as twitched. Looking around, he sees Julia leaning against the closed door. “He won’t wake up, I’ve made sure of that,” she says, matter-of-fact. 

“Julia, what the actual fuck.”

“I didn’t want to be interrupted,” she says, and it’s not as carelessly flippant as when she was shadeless, not as otherworldly as she could get once she accepted her godhead, but it’s a little bit of both of those, with a shade of the mischief that used to get him caught up in pranks in middle school. 

“Julia,” Quentin hisses, but gives up. She’s going to do what she’s going to do, and it’s kind of blatantly obvious that he can’t stop her. Eliot is going to flip shit when Quentin tells him, but for now… “What is going on that was so important  _ you knocked my boyfriend out?” _

“I didn’t knock him out, I just made sure he’d stay asleep,” Julia says, perching on the foot of the bed. “Look, you guys are doing that spell the day after tomorrow, and I just wanted to warn you, because I’m not sure - Other-Julia and I have our own plans for work to do at the same time. Some of you might feel us, but you need to ignore it and keep going. Make sure no one asks too many questions, tell them it’s a normal mending sensation, whatever you have to.” 

“Julia,” Quentin says, horrified. “What are you two doing?” 

“Enacting a plan cooked up between Lady Hecate and Lady Macaria, the new Queen of the Underworld. It’s also my counterpart’s chance to prove herself worthy of being a demigoddess, sworn to Lady Macaria for the same year and a day deal I made.”

“That doesn’t explain shit, Jules. Why do you have to do it at the same time?”

“It’s the only way it will work. Quentin, I swear that it won’t affect what you’re doing. They just have to be done at the same time because they both require the same circumstances.” 

“The moon phases,” Quentin guesses. 

“Among other things. The mending spell actually creates the final circumstance that our project needs, and Other-Julia knew that when she designed the spell. Everything will work as planned, for you and for us. But if anyone panics during your spell it could all fall apart.” 

“So you want me to lie, and say it feels like part of mending,” Quentin repeats, just to make sure. 

“Yeah, because otherwise someone might try to interfere with us.” 

“What exactly are you doing?” 

“Nothing you didn’t do saving your counterpart, but I’m bound to secrecy. I literally can’t tell you, but…” Julia flicks her fingers, and for a moment a spark of blue fire circles over her fingertips. Blue fire, the color of Niffin fire. 

Nothing they didn’t do to save Casper, who had been almost a Niffin with a shade… 

“Julia, why is the goddess of magic working together with the new Queen of the Underworld?” Quentin asks slowly. 

“To take care of an out of hand problem that concerns them both,” Julia says. “They can’t do it everywhere, but in the interlinked realities Jane Chatwin created, they can use these very specific circumstances to at least do some clean-up  _ here _ . It’ll build again, but it’ll take a long time. Did you know our timelines, because of the weird shit that seems to keep happening with magic as an aftereffect of trying to fight the Beast, have an overabundance of Niffins and shadeless people?”

“No,” Quentin says very quietly. “I did not know that. Julia -” 

“That’s all I can tell you, Quentin. I need you to keep everyone else on track, OK?”

“Sure,” Quentin says, and means it. Well, he means most of it. Except the part about the lying, he decides that even before Julia vanishes in a shimmer of silver. The sudden darkness leaves him all but blind, but he doesn’t exactly need to see to think. The last time they didn’t actually tell each other the truth about their plans, the Monster escaped Blackspire and they all got mind-wiped. Well, except Alice, who got locked up instead. 

And before that, the Beast… If they’d all just talked things out, known what all their goals were and done something that could achieve everyone’s, maybe no one would have died at all, no one would have gotten hurt, maybe no one would even have been bartered away for a knife.

With that in mind, he rolls over and shakes Eliot’s shoulder. 

“Ngh - what, Q?” Eliot grumbles into his pillow, still mostly asleep. “Something wrong?” 

“Not exactly, but there’s a new development we have to talk out,” Quentin says, and he doesn’t need to see Eliot to feel him go tense. Quentin can’t blame him - he trusts Julia, but this thing just keeps getting bigger, doesn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

A world over, a different Quentin has no idea of their larger problems, but he’s up at night anyway, pacing the living room with his walker and thinking. It’s really starting to become a habit, but he has a lot to think about these days. 

The pacing, at least, is paying off - he can now get from his room to the kitchen without the walker, though it leaves him shaky and breathless. The thinking, well… That one’s more a work in progress. 

(The magic practice is going better than the thinking or the walking, which is… an unexpected twist. He has a theory about that involving the meds he’s back on, but he needs to look into it more before he’s certain. If he’s right, he’s fucking  _ pissed  _ about it.)

Most of the stuff on his mind is his own shit, good or bad. Dealing with having been the captive of three Niffins wearing his own face, Eliot’s, and Margo’s, well… They hadn’t really hurt him, they’d considered him a curiosity to be investigated, it wasn’t like hosting Niffin Alice in his tattoo. It had been more like a kid with a new pet, not trying to hurt but sometimes a little overenthusiastic - and he’d been the pet. Still, not as bad as the Monster could be even by accident, when he wasn’t trying to be violent but misjudged his own strength. 

Except for Quentin’s own Niffin counterpart, who occasionally got a little mean when he thought his Eliot was liking the interloper too much. Quentin can’t entirely blame Niffin-him for that, even if reasoning that out kind of makes his head hurt. Still, he supposes jealousy is a bitch, even for Niffins.

The glimpses of worlds he saw when he was running, well, that’s mostly not a bad thing, in some cases even a cool thing. Other-him said he’d taken up art again, and Quentin thinks that’s a good idea. He remembers being Brian, his ink-over-pencil sketches and his watercolors, and the idea of making art again is a nice one, actually. He can probably get a lot out of the things he remembers seeing as he ran through the gold. The idea makes his fingers itch, and he can’t remember the last time he was eager to do something so…  _ normal _ , so he wants it in a way that is  _ not  _ normal. 

He thinks maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Not right now, at least. Maybe all first wanting is like that, after so long not being alive and being numb before that.

But that, like his wobbly legs and the colors he sees - the entire penthouse is a patchwork of flickering color in the wall, mostly an acid green that he assumes is Marina’s magic but with hints of the red that is Kady (darker than Eliot’s shade) like she added or altered some of it - are his to deal with. His new body will recover in its own time, and he will learn to inhabit it like the one he was born with. He can do those things. They’ll just take time, like when he broke his leg in undergrad. Or, presumably, like how Other-Quentin had to learn to function with only one leg. 

He did it, and they are functionally the same person with some divergent experiences, which means Quentin can do it. 

But there are other things Quentin remembers which can’t be handled with only enough time and stubbornness. Like the darkness in the very center of where his mind and Other-Quentin’s had merged, lit only by a bonfire like the one the others had at his memorial, except that the flames had been the golden shade of the fire he’d fallen through, of the sparks that had killed him. 

(His eyes aren’t quite that shade; they’re the darker gold his outline had been made of, which makes sense really.)

Above all, what Quentin remembers is Eliot, appearing in that darkness to bring Quentin home. Denying everything Quentin had been told, had believed, about how his death was what was necessary, that it had been meant to happen and was the best thing for the people he loved. 

And -

_ “You’ll stay with me?” _

_ “Couldn’t be dragged away, if you want me.”  _

_ “I always want you. Which is sometimes half the problem. You burned a peach at my funeral. I wondered why you’d pick that, when I thought you wanted to forget about that.”  _

_ “I’ll tell you, if you come home with me. I have a lot to tell you, but I won’t do it here. Not like this, Q. I miss you. We all miss you. Maybe we could move on, but fuck that. We don’t want to and we don’t have to, because you are  _ **_ours_ ** _ , and the goddamn afterlife, fucking magic itself? Not allowed to have you. Now come on.” _

Quentin stands in front of the door to the balcony and rests his head on the glass, watches the raindrops slide down it. Watches the dark clouds shimmer with lightning like fire and remembers firelight on Eliot’s face and how lost he’d looked, when Penny took Quentin to his own memorial. Remembers torchlight on Eliot’s face on a very different night, and how impossible it had been to keep himself from kissing him.

_ “Fifty years. Who gets proof of concept like that?” _

Quentin remembers staring at Eliot’s hand, the red-and-gold string wrapped around his wrist. He remembers looking up into his eyes and knowing somehow that yes, he could go home if he took Eliot’s hand. He could do that if Eliot stayed with him, if he wasn’t alone. He remembers how much he had wanted it, and the feeling of the red string as it wrapped around their hands and wrists. 

Here and now, Quentin looks down at the red braided mark circling his wrist. He knows Eliot has one to match, and the others dart glances at both of them when they think they’re being subtle. Even  _ Alice _ , a time or two, which gives Quentin a really contradictory mix of awkward guilt and an urge to laugh, because when you hit that level of ‘everyone can see it’ you kind of… have to laugh. 

He thinks he knows what Eliot will tell him. It’s… not exactly hard to figure out, given their counterparts in 40a pretty much act married, but knowing is - is - 

Quentin taught himself to stop hoping Eliot would change his mind a long time ago. It’s harder than he expected to open himself up again. Even if it’s nearly a sure thing… he’d thought that in the throne room, hadn’t he? But then again, they are now almost to the end of the world if their spell doesn’t work, so…

It kinda sucks that if they all die and he dies again, he won’t have even gotten to properly see the sun, what with being bedridden first and the shitty weather afterwards. Quentin’s still leaning on the glass, still watching the rain and the lightning like flames, when it occurs to him that the last time he was outside was in the trippy forest that last day, because 23 had traveled them straight to the infirmary and then right from there to the lab where they’d set up the mirror. 

The body he’s in now has never been outside.

It’s strange, how that realization just slams into him. This body, this body made of hair and blood and living clay, that doesn’t feel entirely like his but feels entirely real, this body has never been outside. Never felt sunlight except filtered through window glass, never felt grass or the wind or snow - 

Or the rain. 

Quentin’s always kind of liked the rain, usually when he can watch from inside, but there’s also… He remembers that day, when he’d been giddy with relief at not getting expelled, walking past the Cottage to the dorms as rain began to fall. 

_ “Quentin!”  _

_ “Get over here!”  _

He never told either of them that it always felt, after, like that was when his new life began, with Eliot and Margo calling to him. Not with Eliot on the Brakebills sign, because he’d been too confused. Not when he’d seen the cards fly into the air or signed that waiver on Fogg’s desk, however thrilled about the truth of magic he might have been. 

But that day. That moment when he realized he had not only magic but a  _ place _ . People who wanted him with them. He can still remember the exact tones of their voices, and he used to be able to remember how the rain felt on his skin. But he can’t remember the feeling of rain at all now, not in that memory or any other. He can only think it must feel something like how the shower feels. 

It’s not fair. He wants it back. If the world is going to end the day after tomorrow then he wants - well. He wants a lot of experiences refreshed in his memory that are simply not going to happen because he’s not steady enough for them. Or that the world won’t cooperate with - it’s the wrong time of year for snow and the sun doesn’t seem to want to come out. 

But it’s raining outside.

He leaves the walker by the door - if he gets too shaky someone put a chair out there so he can just sit down. He doesn’t want to use it right now, as he opens the door and steps outside, on his own two wobbly feet. It matters, for some reason he can’t put his finger on. But it does matter, and if that’s the only thing he knows then it’s something. 

Quentin steps out barefoot, and even before he feels the rain he feels the difference of the roughness (stone or concrete, he’s not sure) on his feet after the scratchy-soft carpet and smooth wood or tile of the floors inside. He wiggles his toes as he walks to the end of the balcony, hands braced on the wet stone of the rail when he gets there.

He’s already drenched by the time he shuffles over there, hair plastered to his face and raindrops in his eyes even before he turns his face up to the sky. He takes a deep breath and just lets himself feel it, the drops hitting his skin, the way his pajamas stick to his skin as the water soaks the cloth. There’s a wind, hot and damp and under the rain smell is something sharper like ozone. 

Quentin knows that last bit isn’t normal but he can’t bring himself to care. He feels - he feels  _ present _ , in each warm raindrop on his skin, the roughness under his toes and his hands, the way the wind swirls around him. He feels solid in a way he hasn’t before, vague and unsteady in his new body. He’s no less steady, but somehow he feels more real. Not whole exactly, but like pieces that might fit, like pieces that want to fit again.

He tips his head up and blinks water from his eyes, looking at the city lights that keep New York City from ever being dark, and then up, up to the dark clouds as lightning cracks across them. Red-orange-yellow like the bonfire at his memorial, like the torchlight a year into the Mosaic, like a tiny flame conjured from long fingers to cast a cigarette. Like the way the lock on the Cottage back door burned, like a campfire for a boy and a girl to toast marshmallows with on summer-night birthdays three years in a row. 

When the tears slide out from under his closed lids, they feel like just part of the rain, a little warmer but that’s all. The rain runs down his skin and his tears run down his face with it, and thunder rolls in his ears. 

This is real. This is  _ real _ , and  _ he  _ is real - this is rain and he has a body that can get wet and he - he’s - 

He’s alive again. He really is. And this time, if they get out of this one last fucking crisis, he has to remember how to run when he has to, how to hold on. 

He doesn’t hear the door open, but he does hear -

“Quentin?” 

Quentin turns to see Eliot there, sleepy and worried in the doorway. “Q, come inside, you’re gonna get sick.” And Quentin has to grit his teeth against the frustration that he can’t just  _ answer _ , that he has no way to respond because his notepad isn’t in reach and would be ruined by the rain anyway. He shakes his head instead, fanning his face like he’s hot, trying to say - 

“No, you won’t get sick because the water’s hot?” Eliot guesses, and Quentin nods, even though the water is more warm than hot. Then he reaches out a hand with a little smile. Eliot raises his eyebrows, but after a second just shakes his head. 

“All right, baby,” he murmurs, stepping out into the rain himself and taking Quentin’s hand. Quentin smiles up at him, pulling him closer until they’re hugging as the rain pours down over them. He can’t - he can’t tell Eliot why he’s doing this till they get inside and he’s dry enough to write without dripping all over the paper, but he can share it, at least. 

And he finally feels solid enough that when he does explain, he’s also going to have a question for Eliot. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Eliot is half-expecting Quentin to be out in the living room when he heads there himself, tired of staring up at the ceiling in his room and hoping for sleep. He knows Quentin walks at night, has seen the improvements in him day by day from the late night exercise. Also, he found him two mornings ago asleep on the couch, having crashed there instead of the bed. 

He is not expecting to see him through the glass doors of the patio, standing with his face upturned to the pouring rain as if it’s giving him some kind of blessing. Eliot’s not stupid, and he knows Quentin, so it’s obvious that whatever’s going on is something he wants, but still. Eliot just got him back and he remembers what Alex said about returned people tending to have things like weaker immune systems. 

But when Quentin holds out a hand instead of coming back in when Eliot prods him to, silently asking Eliot to join him instead… 

Well. Eliot’s only human, and it’s the first time Quentin has reached out to him since coming back. Accidentally or not, it’s also with the arm marked by a red braid, and Eliot can see his own matching mark in the wavery lights of the city as he takes Quentin’s hand. Quentin pulls him into a hug and Eliot goes, holding onto Quentin in the rain and instinctively swaying them a little. 

They danced in the rain once - the day after their wedding, Teddy was with Arielle and her second husband Mattes to give Quentin and Eliot time alone, and Quentin had been laughing and giddy as he made Eliot spin around with him in the rain. It had been a warm day for autumn, and luckily they didn’t get sick. Eliot doesn’t spin them now, just holds Quentin tight as the rain soaks him through. 

“We should get inside,” he murmurs in Quentin’s ear after a little while, and Quentin nods, lets Eliot lead him inside, where the air conditioning makes them both instantly freezing. Hissing, Eliot performs a quick series of tuts that dries them off and warms them. “So, what was that about?” Eliot asks as they make their way over to the couch, measuring his steps so he doesn’t overtake Quentin shuffling with the walker. They sit facing each other, Quentin’s legs curled under him in one of his odd contortions, the kind he hasn’t bothered with since he came back. 

Eliot’s not foolish enough to think the rain was some kind of magical cure, but whatever Quentin was doing out there has clearly set off something. He seems… more  _ himself  _ in this moment than he has yet, as he bends his head over his notebook again, then hands it to Eliot. 

_ I just remembered that I hadn’t been outside since I got back. And that I couldn’t remember how the rain felt. So I wanted to feel it again. And it - I don’t know, Eliot. I can’t explain it. But it’s like it was some kind of real proof that I’m alive? I could feel it, I could feel how real it was and how real I am, and it felt good. Really, really good. _

Eliot doesn’t know if his heart is swelling or breaking - maybe both. He kind of wants to cry and also to laugh, and he’s not sure what to do about any of it. So he skims his fingers down Quentin’s cheek, leans forward so he can kiss the top of his head. “I’m glad,” he says, but falters at the way Quentin’s eyes have narrowed, the way he practically yanks the notepad back. 

_ You said you’d tell me if I came back with you. Why the peach, Eliot? Why did you quote me in the throne room, of all the things you could have said, that day you broke through? I need to know. _

The world - tilts. And Eliot should have expected this,  _ has  _ expected it on some level because he did use his explanation as a bribe to get Quentin to come back, but he can’t do this here. Not in the living room where anyone could come in. He gets up and he brings Quentin up with him, helps him down the hallway because they both forget about the walker until they’re actually at Eliot’s door. Eliot, rather than leave, because if he does he might hide, steers the walker telekinetically into his room and into the corner near the window where it’ll be out of the way. Quentin’s eyebrows shoot up, his lips curling slightly in amusement, but the reprieve doesn’t last. 

Quentin watches him steadily from where he sits on the edge of Eliot’s bed, and the color might have changed but Eliot knows those eyes, knows  _ that look _ in those eyes. Quentin won’t be moved until he gets his answer. And Eliot wants to give it to him, he does, it’s just that he’s afraid. So he goes to his bag and he pulls out the letter with the time stamp. 

_ To Quentin Coldwater, Before He Went to the Seam. _

It’s all in here, along with a good bit of begging to convince Quentin not to die at the Seam. Eliot could just hand Quentin this letter and it would explain everything. Nice and easy, nice and simple, just give him the letter Eliot meant to send him anyway, the letter Eliot carried for months while he hoped other methods of getting Quentin back would make the time stamp unnecessary. 

The time stamp it turns out he couldn’t have used, not with so much timeline fuckery already happening. Eliot wonders if Jane knew, and that was why she’d told him what she did - although, really, if she did know, advice as banal as “we already won” and “let the dead stay dead” was even less helpful than Jane Chatwin’s previous record back in the Beast mess.

Still. Eliot could use the letter now, the words he found once that are choking him now. Except that when he turns back to Quentin, letter in hand, he can’t make himself hand it over. Quentin is watching him like he did in that dark part of the dreamscape, his eyes nearly the color of those flames, and - 

It’s the work of a thought, a twist and curl of his fingers and the letter catches fire, ashes crumbling to the floor at Eliot’s feet. Quentin frowns, scribbles on his notebook, and holds it up.  _ What was that? _

“A letter,” Eliot says. “A letter with time magic on the stamp, it’s how we saved Fen and Josh. It was my backup plan for saving you, a letter that would get to you before you left, convince you to come back to me. I put everything in it, and I could have just let you read it because it would still be me telling you and it would be easier than saying it. But I - I promised. A memory of you, not really you, but still. I promised, and you deserve -” 

Eliot cuts himself off, rakes a hand through his curls. He really needs to cut them, or figure out a nicer way of taming them besides just slicking them back. He hasn’t cared about it, not since he woke up to Margo telling him the worst news he’s ever had. He’s only barely cared about the beard, and that only because letting it get too long would start to get in his way.

“You deserve my actual words. Like, spoken aloud. So. OK.” Eliot crosses the room, dropping to his knees in front of Quentin. It’s almost like facing Memory Quentin in the Happy Place version of the throne room, which feels kind of appropriate. Except the bed is higher up than the dais step was, and Quentin is in a soft green t-shirt and blue jeans worn white at the knees rather than all black. 

(Actually, Quentin seems to be avoiding the black in his wardrobe. Since ghost-Quentin in the dreamscape had been wearing all black, Eliot suspects that was what he went to the Seam wearing, and as far as he’s concerned, the more Quentin distances himself from that day the better.)

But the hair is the same, and the confusion in Quentin’s eyes is the same if the color isn’t. Eliot takes a deep breath, and reaches for Quentin’s hands. They’re soft with newness, like the rest of Quentin is, in this new body Eliot and Alice and Margo built for him. Eliot sees little smears of ink on Quentin’s fingers from his gel pens and remembers how they used to be stained with chalk dust, how they’d looked as work and age left them callused and wrinkled. 

How there used to be a copper ring on Quentin’s hand that Eliot put there. 

“I’m bad at this Q, I’m so fucking horrible at this but I - that day, in the throne room. When I said it wasn’t us. I lied. It was us, and I knew that. I still think I was right that it was too fast after we got hit with the memories but I should have said we should take a few days, talk about it then. And all the rest of it… It was bullshit, I was afraid, and when I’m afraid I run away. I love you, I’m in love with you, and I should have told you that, I shouldn’t have doubted you. And I swore I’d tell you if I got out, and then you were - you were dead and it was like the fucking world stopped making sense. I don’t know if you still feel the same but - you deserve to know. So you can decide what you want.” 

Quentin stares at him for a long, long moment, then tugs one hand free. Just one, his right hand, and he squeezes Eliot’s right with his left, as if to soothe any worry he feels. But with his right Quentin gropes for his pen, only he can’t write without being able to hold his notebook still. Instinctively, Eliot holds it still telekinetically, which gets him a quick little smile. Then Quentin is writing, then turning the notebook so Eliot can see. 

_ If you think I don’t still want you, that I’m not still in love with you, you’re not paying that much attention, El.  _

Eliot would argue that point, because of Alice if nothing else, but he decides now isn’t the time for that. So he keeps reading. 

_ I still want you, I want what we can be, our own version of what our counterparts have. It’s just that… I’m not sure I’m enough me yet to be a decent boyfriend, I’m still not all the way myself again. I want to be together, it just might take time before we’re really together?  _

Eliot isn’t sure if Quentin’s worrying about the physical parts of a relationship or just generally fussing, and he doesn’t care. Or, rather, he doesn’t care in this particular moment. He doesn’t actually think through pushing up on his knees to pull Quentin into a hug, and next moment he’s overbalanced and they’re both on the floor but still clinging to each other. 

At least the carpet is springy and soft.

Eliot maneuvers them so they’re lying on their sides, face to face. Quentin looks bewildered, but also amused. “It takes as long as it takes, sweetheart,” he says quietly. “For now, we find a place together, and we go from there. I’m a fucking mess too, Q. We take it a day at a time, I’m not in any hurry now, OK?” 

Quentin nods, one hand coming up to cup Eliot’s cheek, and despite Quentin’s warnings, he’s the one who leans in for a soft kiss, a promise and a kind of hello all at once. Eliot kisses back just as softly, because there really is no hurry. If the spell fails, well, then it won’t matter. And if they succeed, then he and Quentin have all the time they need. 

He’ll make sure of that, one way or another. 

For now, even though they’re on the floor and should get up soon, Eliot just wants to hold onto the man he loves for a while, wants to have a moment to just soak in that they’re on the same page now, they’ve found their way back now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	10. Shattered Edges Glisten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are more conversations, an apocalypse is averted, and the divine scheme the Julias got involved in is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this chapter finds you well!
> 
> The only warning for this chapter that I can think of is further discussion of Quentin's suicide and depression, but as ever, if you see something I missed, let me know!
> 
> Thanks to all my enablers, especially Maii!

**Eliot 40a**

On the whole, Eliot would say that his opinion of Julia Wicker is neutral. He’s had plenty of reason to dislike her, just as much reason to respect if not like her, and the sum total approaches a neutral sort of respect paired with general well-wishes. But just now, he’s pretty fucking pissed off. Haven’t they learned yet, between two realities, what happens when one of them starts scheming and doesn’t share with the class? 

Yes, Eliot knows he’s as guilty of that as anyone, but that is exactly the point - if he and Margo had sat Quentin down and told him that there was no way in hell they were letting him stay in the castle instead of cooking up the gun scheme behind his back, then maybe… Maybe they could have come up with some kind of failsafe. 

That is of course assuming that Alice’s betrayal didn’t still leave them as screwed as they were in reality. 

But every time one of them gets the idea to do something huge without mentioning it, shit goes wrong. Every time. And now? When this spell is to stop the literal apocalypse? Eliot doesn’t think now is the time to play games.

That being said, when both versions of their little group - coven? - gather in their respective penthouses to talk over the mirrors, Eliot can’t help but feel a little bad for Other-Julia, who is left facing all their questions on her own. “I literally can’t tell you,” she says when Quentin’s finished explaining what Julia told him, her voice echoing slightly from the mirror.

“What do you mean?” Other-Margo demands. 

“I mean, literally, I can’t say it. I’m under a geas, I can’t speak the words. So is she, my counterpart. Lady Hecate and Lady Macaria are taking no chances, because what they’re doing… Hades has vanished, ever since Persephone’s death. Lady Macaria is in charge down there and she’s -” 

Other-Julia stops with a strangled sound like someone tried to choke her, and Other-Quentin, sitting between her and his Eliot, reaches for her hand. “There really is only so much I can say, without the geas physically preventing it. But I swear, this is not something that will hurt the main spell. It’s only that the repair spell creates the circumstances for what the goddesses want us to help them do.”

“It involves the Niffins and people who are shadeless, doesn’t it?” Quentin asks, looking straight through two mirrors at the alternate version of his oldest friend, and though he’d said it as a question, there really is no uncertainty in his voice. 

Other-Julia sits there for a moment, then says, “I can’t seem to move my head for a yes or no either, Makepeace. But what I can say is that Lady Hecate wants to cleanse, and Lady Macaria offers a second chance. Anything more than that, they’ll choke me again, and I might lose my shot at this. It’s going to be a good thing, I promise.” 

“Can we actually stop it, whatever it is?” Alice asks, hands clenched in her lap. 

“No,” Other-Julia says. “They’re going to do it anyway.”

“Then there’s no point worrying about it, is there?” Other-Kady asks.

“No,” their Kady chimes in. “All that’s going to do is distract us from what we need to do, and that’s the last thing we need.” 

“We psych ourselves out, we’re more likely to fuck up,” Margo says, and Kady nods. 

“Yeah. I knew a lot of people who fucked up not so much because they couldn’t do shit but because they got spooked. We need to just go in there, do our thing, and fix this.”

“Will it be a problem afterwards?” Other-Alice asks. Other-Julia shrugs. 

“Things will… change. I don’t know what else I can say. But it’s something that I think you in particular will have reason to welcome, and ability to help with.”

There isn’t really much to say after that, so they break up the meeting, dropping the curtains, spelled also for silence, back over their respective mirrors. On their side, no one says anything for a long moment, and then Quentin says, “It’s definitely about the Niffins.” 

“You don’t think…” Alice trails off, raising her eyebrows as Quentin looks over at her. 

“I mean, could they?” 

“I’m not sure, actually. You know more about that side of it than I do.”

“Yeah, but it was luck as much as anything else -” 

Eliot… feels a little strange, watching his boyfriend and said boyfriend’s ex having a moment like this, but it’s as simple as a shared experience. Intellectually, he knows that. Still. “OK, bookworms, share with the class?” he chimes in. 

“The boxed Niffins were all freed,” Alice says. “Why, unless -” 

“They mean to do something with Niffins in general,” Quentin continues. “And the only thing Niffins and shadeless humans have in common…” 

“Is that they lack their shades, which is part of why you can’t bring Niffins back, usually,” Alice continues. 

“It only worked for Alice because when Jules and I went to get Julia’s shade, she chose to bring back Alice’s instead. A fluke, because how often could those particular circumstances be repeated? Maybe if you could temporarily remove your shade and, like, store it somewhere, you could go fetch someone else’s, but that’s it.” 

Now Eliot remembers. It hadn’t been his primary concern at the time, but now that he thinks about it, Quentin did explain how it had all worked out. “That’s right, you said that only an equal amount of shades and… personas? Consciousnesses? The part of the person left behind post shade, whatever. If you have two of those going down, only that many shades can come back up. But that’s if humans do it. You think these goddesses want to restore the Niffins’ shades?” 

“What good will that do without new bodies? Make a bunch of Casper Qs? That seems harsher than Niffinhood, doesn’t it?” Margo says from where she’s topping off her coffee in the kitchen.

“Oh, definitely,” Alice says. “As a Niffin the isolation is irrelevant. But to be essentially a magical ghost… Casper would know more, but from what Q said, he wasn’t exactly doing well, was he?”

“Not even a little,” Quentin says. “But maybe they’d make a community of some kind? Like a new, I don’t know, magical race? Except then they probably wouldn’t affect our world, and Other-Julia implied they would.” 

“What do shadeless humans have to do with it?” Eliot asks, then sighs. It’s been a bad day for his leg, so he has his cane again. In some ways, he finds he likes carrying it; it gives him something to do with his hands, anyway. Rubbing his fingertips against smooth dark wood and aged silver, he has an idea that seems completely insane on the surface, but maybe… “What if they’re giving all the shades back?”

“That would be… a lot,” Kady says. “I’ve met or heard of multiple other cases of shadeless people - it’s not exactly a typical accident, you’re more likely to just kill or maim yourself. But it’s more common for hedges than Niffining out, unfortunately, thanks to the kind of shit spells we usually get. Niffins tend to be classicals or casters with their clan spells passed down and refined through generations, though there’s exceptions all around, obviously.”

“I better get back to the Library,” Alice says grimly. “And call 23, he can fill in Fogg and whoever else at Brakebills needs to know, because whatever they’re planning, we should probably be ready.” 

“I’ll give the hedge circuits a heads-up,” Kady agrees, and then it’s just Eliot, Quentin, and Margo in the living room/kitchen space. 

“First Wicker, then Quinn, now Wicker again - what is it with your girls and throwing a monkey wrench into things, Q?” Margo asks, plopping down on Eliot’s lap and swinging her legs up onto Quentin’s lap after kicking off her heels.

“I mean, technically, Bambi, you tried to pull her in first, remember?” Eliot says with a sigh, absently starting to braid a chunk of Margo’s hair.

“That’s fair. But man, if you thought our nerd boy here was clueless about signals, she was way worse.” 

“I know that story, something about dresses, and then you helped Alice find Emily Greenstreet?” Quentin asks, looking at them curiously. “But you guys are talking like there was some kind of actual plan involved?” 

And Eliot - he can’t help but laugh, honestly, because it’s so long ago now but he remembers all too well how he and Margo had compared notes on the prickly nerd and the nervy one, their plans to each seduce one of them. Although Margo had said with a laugh that once Eliot was ‘done with the boy’ maybe she’d have a go too. 

God, they’d had no idea what they were getting into. 

“Oh, we absolutely had a plan,” Margo says with a smirk, poking Quentin’s chest with her toes. “But it didn’t work out - or at least my half didn’t. But don’t distract me, these are still your girls causing us trouble, Coldwater. That’s how it shook out, you get the blame, kid.” 

Quentin sighs. “I’m pretty sure Alice would hex someone who called her one of my girls if she heard it, and Jules wouldn’t like it either, but if we must look at it from that angle, I like difficult people?”

“Was that a stealth insult,  _ sweetheart _ ?” Eliot says, the endearment more of a playful threat. 

“You tell me,  _ darling _ .” 

“Good God, is it spell time yet? Too much honey around here, I’m gonna drown in it,” Margo grumbles, and both Eliot and Quentin laugh.

Kady is right, really, Eliot decides as Margo talks Quentin into redoing her flaking toenail polish for her, since she doesn’t have to get back to Fillory just yet. They can’t afford to worry about whatever the Julias and their goddess friends have in mind, because they can’t do anything about it. The point here is to just do what they have to do, and then - 

Then he and Quentin will be free of this shit, and that’s all Eliot wants.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

Quentin hesitates as the group conference breaks up, but then catches Margo’s wrist, holding up his notebook.  _ Can we talk for a minute?  _

“Q, I really need to get back to Fillory.” 

_ You could be in Fillory for quite a while, and this is important but it shouldn’t take long, _ Quentin writes. He doubts it will take long, anyway - Margo isn’t likely to want to talk to him much. This isn’t about that, even though he misses the friend who sat on his bed and talked Fillory with him, or who once promised to enchant a mirror to keep him updated while he went to help Julia. 

Who crowned him, years ago on the cliffside. 

He just doesn’t think he’s going to get that friend back, which means that all he needs now is a few answers. Once he has them, he can come to grips with them and things will be… at least neutral, with Margo. They need to be at least that, for Eliot’s sake if nothing else. So he beckons Margo back to his room, where they sit on the bed. 

_ I just need to know, are you still mad at me? _ he writes, and then shows her the page. 

Margo frowns, shaking her head slightly. “I’m… not mad at you, what are you talking about?”

Quentin knows his skepticism must show on his face, and so he turns his notebook back to an angle where he can easily write. _ I mean, back before I died, you barely had the time of day for me, a couple mocking wisecracks and that was it. I assumed you were mad at me because of Eliot getting possessed trying to save me? _

Margo stares at the page for a long moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line. It’s an unusual gesture for her, and Quentin waits, watching uncertainly. He’s not wrong about what happened, he knows that much, but… but… Maybe he misread why? 

“OK, fine,” Margo sighs, leaning back on her elbows. “You want the truth, Q? I was pissed at us both. Or did you forget shooting that fucker was my idea? And I left you holding the bag, I didn’t check in with you because… I told Fen, when we thought El was dead, that I couldn’t start crying because I’d never stop. And I knew I wouldn’t be fair to you the same way. I told myself I was focusing on Fillory, you had Wicker for backup… But the truth is I didn’t trust myself with you.” 

Quentin flips his pen over and under his fingers. _ I mean, it is technically my fault. _

“No, it’s not. I mean, yeah, you were a fucking idiot if you thought we were gonna just let you do it - I mean, come on, I went knocking on Jane Chatwin’s door and dug up a body to save you and El once, did you really think either of us were gonna let you get away with just sacrificing yourself?” 

_ Yeah, I did. I figured it was what was necessary, so you’d have to, _ Quentin admits, shrugging a shoulder as he finishes writing.

“Fuck that, Coldwater, you deciding to give yourself up to shit is just not OK, all right? It’s why we lost you.” Margo grabs Quentin’s wrist before he can start writing, although honestly he’s not entirely sure what he would have written. “I know it wasn’t the big heroic sacrifice some of us thought it was, but it’s still part of a pattern for you, Q. And we didn’t pay enough attention, and you… I’m not saying you need a babysitter, it’s basically like how I lost my temper at the wrong moment and declared war. When you don’t have a buffer you put yourself at unacceptable risk.”

Quentin is not sure that’s exactly a good comparison, but he gets the point - and he does appreciate that he’s not being told he needs a babysitter.  _ If it helps, I think I definitely got the hint this time, _ he writes. And it’s true. He’s not stupid, he knows the thoughts will come back because depression is a bitch that way, but… 

He knows what death looks like now, or enough of it to know that he doesn’t want to see the Underworld Library or that archway again for a long time. He hopes that he can cling to that knowledge when things turn bad again.

“Good. I did miss you, Q. I didn’t help El at first - if you didn’t know that already I’m sure someone will tell you. Might as well cop to it myself. I didn’t think El could do it, and I thought… I thought he’d die trying and if I didn’t help he’d give up.” 

Quentin blinks, and he isn’t exactly sure what to say to that. On the one hand, it’s irrational to be hurt that she didn’t think he could be saved, being dead and all. But he still is, rationality notwithstanding. And yet, somehow more importantly…  _ But in the end you did. You traded an axe to get my blood. Alice told me she’s not sure it really would have worked just with Red’s ‘donations’. _

Margo smiles, just a little. “Nice of her to say that. Also, that witch is fucking creepy, what the hell.” She smiles, then leans forward, brushing a bit of hair out of Quentin’s eyes. It’s a familiar gesture - Margo’s done it before, and Julia used to do it too. Maybe he has pettable hair or something? Like a cat or dog? It’s always nice, so he tries not to dwell. “I’m glad I changed my mind, Q. Losing you was… I was in shock that whole fucking memorial, it didn’t feel real. Somehow it never did, like you’d just walk back in one day.”

_ I’m glad you did too, _ Quentin writes, because he is. He suspects Margo would shoot down an outright thank-you every bit as firmly as Eliot and Alice did, so he doesn’t try.

“Just don’t make us have to do it again, OK?”

_ I won’t, I promise,  _ Quentin writes, offering her his hand to shake on the deal. _ Of course, all this is assuming the world doesn’t end, _ he adds, and Margo snorts. 

“I think Eliot jinxed us back when he told you this wasn’t Middle-Earth back when we were trying to get you to care about mentors,” Margo says, with an air like she’s telling Quentin a big secret. “Clearly, once shit’s calmed down, we de-jinx him by making him watch all the movies. We did have a plan for that, once.” 

They had; Quentin remembers this. Margo had told him that she and Eliot stayed in the Cottage over the summer, and if he was with them he could swing it too, and even if he didn’t want to spend the whole summer there he had to come up to help her get Eliot to watch Lord of the Rings. She claimed to need him because unlike her he could do - 

_ Do you think I can still do puppy dog eyes to persuade him?  _

“Not only can you still do them, with the gold they’ll be even more devastating,” Margo says, after taking his chin in her hand and studying his face for a moment. “So, we have a plan?”

_ Yes, ma’am. _

“What are you two up to?” Eliot asks as he strides into the room, dropping down to lie on the other side of Quentin’s bed, graceful and lazy like an oversized cat. And for one weird dizzying moment Quentin feels like a first-year again, because how often did this happen? Eliot or Margo would find him, and whichever one didn’t find him first would then appear partway through to join in. 

More times than he can remember, and they didn’t even have a full school year of time together, it just happened that often.

He wants to draw them, Eliot laid out at ease on the bed, Margo shifted with one leg tucked under her so she can look at them both as she tells Eliot they were just getting themselves sorted back out. He wants his old art kit so bad his fingers literally itch with it, to catch the mischief lingering in Margo’s eyes or the way the lamplight slants over Eliot’s face. Or the soft glow of magic, warm red and palest blue, shimmering around them.

Or even, he realizes, looking over at the mirror over the dresser, how he looks with them, in soft light-colored clothes and his hair still too short, but in the reflection he looks like he fits with them in a way he can never see on his own, his own glow a golden brown. He wants to draw that too, that reflection.

Assuming the world doesn’t end. 

“So everyone’s friends again?” Eliot asks. 

“Yep,” Margo says and Quentin nods. The world isn’t going to end, he decides. They’re going to make sure it doesn’t, and then they’re going to come back from doing that. All of them. Once, he might - once he would, once he  _ did  _ \- tell himself that as long as everyone else makes it, that’s what matters, but he understands better now. It has to be all of them, they all have to come back from this last big job.

Nothing else is really acceptable after all, is it? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Julia, of course, ditches them before they cast - to be fair, she wouldn’t be able to join them even if she wasn’t on some scheme of her own, not when her counterpart isn’t human and thus wouldn’t  _ match  _ like they all need to do. “The crystal will flash blue three times, when it starts to glow steadily then Quentin, you do the lead-in cast. When the glow turns green, everyone begins,” Julia says, and she’s talking to him and Quentin, but she’s also talking to the mirror, curtains pulled back to show their counterparts in Other-Kady’s living room.

Eliot finds it a little weird that he and Q are here and Kady is not, but she’s off with a signaling crystal of her own, somewhere in the city where she’s tapped in with hedges in New York and elsewhere who will be giving the spell a boost. He and Quentin are here because Quentin has to start the spell, and here also has the connections to both Fillory and the Library. The relevant doors are open - Eliot can’t see through the Fillory clock to where Margo and Josh are standing on the other side, but through the Library portal he can see Alice, Zelda, and Alice’s friend Sheila standing in Alice’s office. 

The penthouse is the center of the spell, and he and Quentin are at ground zero. Eliot would hate that, except that the truth is, either this thing goes off without a hitch, or they’re all supremely fucked wherever they happen to be. 

Julia leaves, and then it’s just the two of them, with doorways into two other worlds and a window into another timeline. “I wonder if our life will actually become normal after this,” Eliot says, glancing around the room. Quentin, sitting on the couch for now, shrugs and scribbles in his notebook, then holds it up. 

_ Maybe for a given value of the term, but we’re magicians, so what’s normal? Actually, what’s normal anyway?  _ And he’s doodled a silly emoji face next to the question that makes Eliot roll his eyes but also grin. 

“Good question. Guess we’ll find out.”

Then, suddenly, Alice is walking through her door to join them, except she goes right past them through the Fillory clock and after a pause, comes back with Margo. This happens in the mirror too, and Eliot hears Other-Quentin ask, “What’s going on?” 

Both Alices answer, which only makes the weird echo effect of mirror-audio worse. “There’s a small chance that portal connections will break when everything is put back into place. I might have agreed to be Head Librarian, but not at the cost of losing my place in Earth space-time. So I’m going to cast from here with you.” 

“And Fillory’s wonky at the best of times, I’m taking no chances. Josh has it, he did the incorporate bond before,” Margo says, and her counterpart says almost the same thing except she calls him Hoberman, so presumably they’re not dating anymore? 

(Actually, Eliot’s not entirely sure his Margo is still dating their timeline’s Josh. He should probably find out.)

He glances at the mirror again, seeing the other-versions of the four of them there. Other-Quentin with his prosthetic and his shaggy red hair, Other-Alice with her bobbed haircut and his own counterpart with shorter hair and no beard. The Margos look more or less the same, just different clothes. And Eliot can’t help but think - somehow it’s the four of them again, the way they had expected to be in Fillory but that never panned out.

But this time it has. Somehow, win or lose it’s the four of them in the same room. 

He turns to Margo suddenly, heart in his throat. “Bambi, if this doesn’t work - thank fuck you and I worked our shit out,” he says. Margo grins at him, pulling him down into a firm kiss like the day she told him to choose being smart over being brave. 

“We got this, El,” she says firmly, and then she’s letting him go and they’re both turning to where Quentin is on his feet, and he and Alice are hugging like their lives depend on it. “Hey, Quinn, scoot over,” Margo says, marching over to them. She and Alice don’t hug but they do grip hands, before Margo hugs Quentin. 

Eliot offers Alice his hand, and when she takes it they both hang on. “We did one impossible thing, didn’t we?” Alice says, and Eliot has to smile. 

“Yeah we did. Just one more, right, magic girl?” 

And then Alice is shaking her head at that nickname and letting go of his hand, looking at the crystal like she’s making sure all is well. 

Another hand wraps around his, familiar as his own, and Eliot looks down into Quentin’s upturned face. He leans down to kiss him soft and sweet, thinking,  _ I just got you back, this can’t be over this soon. _

They draw back, but they don’t let go. Margo takes Eliot’s other hand and Alice takes Quentin’s, all four of them watching the crystal Julia left. The time for words seems to be over, the time for words and little moments Eliot is determinedly refusing to admit are just-in-case goodbyes.

The crystal flashes blue three times and Eliot feels Quentin let go of his hand, hears him take a deep breath before he casts the first spell. Partway through he makes a tiny sound like a moan and Eliot turns to look at him, only to see his eyes closed and lips parted, expression something between pain and pleasure. 

Then the crystal glows green and Eliot twists his fingers in the first tut of the full spell - 

Distantly, on some level, he knows that his hands are still casting, but his world dissolves, Alice and Margo and Quentin all vanishing except - except no, they haven’t vanished. As Eliot falls into fire, white and shimmery but flashing all the colors he’s ever heard of and some he can’t name, cannot even  _ describe _ , there’s… 

A bright streak of yellow and blue melding to become green, and somehow he knows it’s Alice, like the pale blue comet is Margo. And twined with him, with the crimson fire he realizes is himself, is a golden-brown that is Quentin. There are other colors, and dimly Eliot is also aware of four streaks of fire the same colors as they are but somehow less vibrant to his magical vision that must be their counterparts. 

Somehow he knows that they appear the same in reverse.

The all-colored flames surround them all, and it - it’s too much, it’s like drowning in fire, like falling forever. Eliot feels himself tumbling end over end, catches a glimpse of pale blue and suddenly he can feel Margo in the spell, can feel the same happening to her, and an echo of it happening to everyone else in the spell. He’s falling away, falling away even from Quentin, he’s melting into the magic and losing himself -

Except -

  
  


<><><>

**Quentin 40b**

Quentin’s been here before. He remembers falling forever in nothingness so complete that he’d lost everything he was. He remembers the void and he remembers his world turning to golden flame, and all the many colors he’d seen as the Niffin trio dragged him through. He remembers, and he almost slips away again, almost falls back into the familiarity of it but - 

Eliot. Eliot as warm red fire falling away from him. No. No. Quentin can’t lose him again, he just got him back, they have to ride this and not drown, how -

This is why he and his counterpart started the spell, isn’t it? Because this is a mending, this is something to be fixed. 

Golden-brown fire slightly dimmer than his own follows his lead - the other Quentin never lived what he did but he experienced some of it and he is a mender too. They come together and they glow, bright as they can, a lighthouse of gold-brown fire and the taste of honey to call the other people in the spell, to guide them as they figure out how to do this.

And then the taste of lemonade and twin comets of yellow-blue-becoming-green, one shining brighter… That’s Alice, that’s both Alices, and of course they remember the fires, they missed the fires but more importantly they know how to ride the fires, how to  _ tame  _ them long enough to do something.

In the wake of the Alices, Quentin and his counterpart find not flame but ice, sheets of clear ice with sparks trapped inside in every color that has ever been in any world. And cracked, all of them, deep wounds dark as the void. But the magic  _ wants  _ to be fixed, as certainly as the Seam-mirror did.  _ This is how we do it, _ he thinks along the ties of magic that bind everyone in this spell.  _ The magic will tell us how to fix it, we just have to listen.  _

It’s a song that he hears that tells him what to do, the way to fixing it that he could never do alone. That isn’t why he’s here. The spell needs a mender, he was told, first by his own counterpart, and he’d thought it was because he would be doing the mending, but it’s not like that. The Alices are here to turn the fires into something they can work with, because that is what they did as a Niffin. Quentin and Other-Quentin are here because -

_Because only we can understand how to fix it,_ _we’re the only ones it speaks to,_ his counterpart tells him, mind-to-mind. Once they were bound and some remnant of that link will last forever. They both know what it is to mend something made of magic, the whisper in their minds of the Seam-mirror, like and unlike any other object.

The song of the magic is the same, like and unlike. They can both sense magic now, can manipulate it as they mend the object it’s part of, and this is nothing but manipulation on the greatest scale.

_ We’re the translator, not the caster, _ Quentin says back as the realization dawns.  _ We’re the only ones who can hear what the magic needs, we’re the messenger.  _

_ We all have our parts to play, _ Other-Quentin agrees.

They send the tune of it down the cooperative links, until it rings in all their heads and in their own ways they all know what to do.

Quentin tastes minty chocolate as Margo fills in cracks with new ice, tastes sweet spices as Eliot pushes jagged edges together with his telekinesis, holding them there till the magic weaves itself back together. Someone Quentin doesn’t know simply seals over the cracks with magenta fire and the taste of bubble gum. 

Not everyone’s power is meant to mend - he tastes peppers and the Kadys are a dark red blaze alongside other bright stars shooting out lines of power to those working the cracks. The power of battle magic, of other things Quentin can’t name, shared with those who can channel all that strength to different ends.

The song echoes as magic settles - as it wakes up, as it remembers itself as a force wild and dangerous but not bursting at its own seams, not trying to destroy itself and everything else. Just a force of nature, like wind and water, to be harnessed but never truly controlled. 

But just as the song reaches crescendo, just as Quentin feels the magic becoming whole again, in that shining moment of  _ rightness  _ \- 

He tastes champagne and something else, something… fruity but indescribable beyond that, he sees purple fire and silver fire. At first, he also tastes tart white wine but it fades and the taste of champagne grows stronger as if the wine turned into it somehow. 

Dizzily he thinks that if Eliot could have done that in Fillory he’d have been very happy, before a crack like lightning whites out the world. Before a sound like a drawbridge rattling open drowns out the magic’s song. 

Then Quentin is falling again, all of the fires that are magicians and hedges and probably a few casters are falling like meteors to the ground. 

He opens his eyes and he’s back in his body, back in Kady’s apartment but no longer standing. All of them are sprawled out on the floor, breathless and dazed with the aftermath of magic beyond anything they’ve done before.

But Quentin knows deep down that whatever happened at the end there, whatever it was that the Julias and the two goddesses wanted, the mending  _ worked _ . The world is not going to end.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

“Holy fucking shit,” Quentin croaks as he sits up, one hand to his head. “I’ve never - I’ve never -” Magic has never been like that before, he thought the cooperative cast for the incorporate bond was impressive but  _ that  _ was on a whole other level.

“I have,” Alice says as she sits up too, her voice equally hoarse. “But I think - that might have been better, because I was myself feeling it.” 

Quentin doesn’t say anything else, turning quickly and reaching for Eliot, both of them grabbing wildly until they can cling together because there had been nothing so terrible as that moment when the crimson light that was Eliot began to untwine from him and tumble away - 

“We’re done, we’re done,” Quentin mumbles into Eliot’s collarbone. “We did it and we’re done.” He can still feel the magic’s song in his very bones, like part of him will always hear the Seam-mirror’s whisper in the back of his mind. A sense of knowing it worked comes with that echo of melody. They fucking did it, he’s sure of that. 

“Is it supposed to be snowing?” he hears Margo say, and he lifts his head, shifting so that he can curl up in Eliot’s lap. He pauses to unfasten his prosthetic, because it’s easier to curl up without it, and in this position they can both see as Margo gets up and opens the door to the terrace. Things look normal again out there, except that a clear night sky full of stars and snowfall doesn’t go together. 

“It’s… ash,” Margo says, kicking at a small pile of it on the terrace and then closing the door again. “What the fuck?” 

“It’s the impurities,” Alice says with a tired sigh. She’d moved too, sitting on the couch now with her head tipped to rest along the back. He hasn’t seen her so willing to relax in a long time. It’s a good thing to see, all else aside. “It’s a good sign. One of the problems was that Everett mixed magic from different realms together, turned it into water that he put in an actual lake, and then of course it was filtered back out through an explosion in the Mirror Realm.”

“That is gonna be a lot for someone to explain,” Eliot says, his voice a low rumble to Quentin’s ears while tucked up against him. “Luckily, that someone isn’t us, right?” 

“It sure as hell ain’t me, anyway,” Margo says decisively, then - “Fuck, the mirror’s not working anymore.” 

Quentin lifts his head then and sure enough - the red-tinted mirror that was a portal to 40b is now only showing their own reflections, a normal mirror in a slightly weird color. They’d expected it, but it’s still a shock, as Margo curses under her breath and runs for the Fillory clock. She vanishes through it and doesn’t come back. 

After a few minutes of waiting, Quentin scrambles off a fidgeting Eliot’s lap, refastening his leg as Eliot approaches the clock warily. “El, be careful,” Quentin says, although it’s Margo and he knows Eliot is ready to plunge in after her to make sure she’s OK. He’ll follow if that happens, plain and simple. But before it can come to that, a bunny drops out of the air. 

“All well! Back to normal! Back later!” the bunny says, then tries to eat the carpet. 

“Ah, no,” Quentin says, carefully levering himself up before picking up the bunny and taking it to the kitchen where he can find lettuce for it. “No eating the floor, or Kady will make rabbit stew on principle.” 

“Quentin, you do remember the bunnies can’t really talk back, right?” Eliot teases, and Quentin makes a face at him. 

Alice is standing at the doorway of the Library portal, which doesn’t seem to have been affected after all, when her cell phone rings. “Hang on, Zelda, I’ll be back soon but I have a call from… Penny, apparently, must be something about Brakebills.” 

She closes the door even though Zelda was about to say something. “Yeah, Penny, what is it?” 

“How can he be calling her from campus?” Quentin asks Eliot softly as he comes over to stand next to him. 

“Either from the faculty building or the infirmary, they have wards protecting technology from magical backfires, which is the real reason most of campus is low-tech. Magic usually works fine with technology but with student magicians things go wrong too eas-” Eliot stops talking abruptly as Alice drops her phone, grabbing onto the closed portal door like an anchor. 

“Alice?” Quentin says, wanting to go over and steady her but not sure she’d welcome the gesture. “What’s wrong?” 

Alice finally looks up at them, eyes too wide and also wet, on the verge of tears. “After the spell was over, there were people just randomly lying on the ground, scattered all over the campus. Every single person who’s ever Niffined out at Brakebills is back. Human, and whole. And one professor who’s been shadeless since 1989 has his shade back. We were right. Macaria gave all the shades back and Hecate must have - the Julias helped them somehow -” 

“You said impurities,” Eliot says slowly. “Hecate wanted those out, but she also wanted the Niffins out.” 

“Wait, but all the Niffins means - Alice, oh my God,” Quentin says, remembering a night by Woof Fountain, a boy with Alice’s eyes and a horrible cruel smile.

Alice nods. “My brother. Charlie. He’s back. I have my brother back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter.
> 
> Or, if you are RP-inclined, I have a Quentin RP sideblog at cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com :)


	11. The Ways of Your Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the apocalypse is averted by cooperative major mending, in 40a it's time to start focusing on the future, while in 40b real recovery is starting to be possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As ever I hope this finds you well.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include references to Quentin's suicide as well as the deaths of Mike and Logan/their effect on Eliot, and some relatively mild dysphoria relating to Q 40b not being in his original body. If I missed anything, please let me know. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii and my enablers on two Discord servers. ;)

**Quentin 40a**

Quentin never does find out exactly how anyone covered up the ash rain in the wake of their… Really, he can’t call it anything but a major mending,  _ cosmic  _ mending even, despite knowing there was more to it than that. Elements of a world creation spell he once thought might make a cool thesis, who knew how many other spells Julia wove in there.

Still, the magic’s song will never fully leave him, and at bottom what they had done was mending. 

But, anyway. He never finds out exactly how non-magical investigations are thwarted. The news just calls it freak occurrences, though the Internet is full of the usual conspiracy theories and bullshit. He Googled it a little, mostly for sheer amusement, and it seems like the religious nuts of various flavors are still expecting the apocalypse, while elsewhere in the dark corners of the Web, more people actually think aliens than magic. 

One particularly hilarious Reddit post argues very convincingly that they’re about to see kaiju pop out of the ocean. Quentin reads this aloud to Eliot and Margo, and when Eliot asks what is a kaiju, Quentin immediately sets the reading aside to put on Pacific Rim. 

When they hit the credits, Eliot looks at the television screen very consideringly and then says, “Well, we’re, what do you call it, that drift thing, I’m not worried,” in a completely deadpan voice. 

Margo laughs so hard she falls off the couch.

Margo is there because they have the Fillory clock now. As Kady pointed out, she has no interest in Fillory, and it’s probably more of a security risk to Fillory to have it in a place where hedges will be in and out than it is to move it. Eliot and Quentin’s apartment was pretty well warded when they moved in, and Eliot has taken to looking up more wards to add ever since it was confirmed that they’d be able to stay. 

It’s getting to the point that whenever Quentin comes back from errands or the clinic where he does physical therapy, he gets a faint aftertaste of sweet spice just from crossing the threshold. He’d accuse Eliot of mild paranoia, except that given the last four years, he can’t exactly blame him for that.

So, with plenty of wards on their apartment, Margo decided the best plan was to put the Fillory clock in their living room. Sometimes Quentin has to laugh at the idea of how he would have reacted, before Brakebills, to having such an important bit of Fillory memorabilia (sort of) in his home. Because he would absolutely have lost his  _ mind  _ over that idea.

Now, it’s a little more bittersweet. Mostly, Quentin thinks, he’s glad of it because the clock is literally a doorway that lets Margo visit them. And, also, maybe a little for the little boy who used to daydream about finding it, or the teenage boy rereading the books in the hospital and finding something in there to hold onto.

Someone jabs him in his good thigh and Quentin yelps. “What?” 

“Earth to Coldwater, you zoned out on us staring at the clock,” Margo says. “You OK?” 

“Just thinking, I guess,” he says with a sigh, leaning his head against the back of the couch. From this angle, Eliot is upside down where he’s standing in front of the refrigerator, apparently contemplating their dinner options. “I’d have gone nuts to have that clock in my living room as a kid, you know?” 

“Ha! You and me both,” Margo laughs. 

“You’re both nerds,” Eliot calls over his shoulder as he chops an onion. From what he’s put out on the counter, Quentin thinks he’s making stir fry? Maybe?

“You say this like it’s news,” Quentin points out, amused. More seriously, he says, “I guess I’m also wondering… You know. What now?” 

Eliot stops what he’s doing, turning to lean against the counter so he can see them. “We did neglect to decide what we were going to do, beyond retirement from questing,” he says, looking thoughtful and a little abashed. “So, we’ve both been off the face of the earth without a job history for a few years, my degree’s in theater and yours is philosophy so we’re both a little screwed there.” 

“See, this is why we used to be so focused on mentors,” Margo says. “Not that we had time for that in the last few years, and not that either of you want to go back to Brakebills now.” 

“God, no, definitely not that,” Quentin says with a sigh. “I could ask around at the clinic I go to for rehab though? I mean, I know you weren’t keen on magical jobs -” 

“Oh, no, the old bed and breakfast scheme was absolutely meant to be a place to cater to magicians,” Eliot corrects. “Muggles can’t appreciate enough of my cocktails. Still, I have to admit the idea has lost most of its appeal. I could still be an excellent host, but I think I used up all my patience as High King and playing nice with the nursing team at the Ravenwood Clinic, none left for customer service.” 

“I was a barista one summer,” Quentin says absently. Actually, he’d kind of liked the job - it wasn’t a Starbucks or anything, just a small local place around the corner from his dad’s house that rarely had serious rushes. Once he’d learned how to use everything there’d been something almost soothing about the process itself, though he’s been to enough busy coffee shops to know he wouldn’t want to work at one of those. “Customer service is not ideal,” he adds, because people can just be  _ nasty  _ to workers they know can’t bite back.

“God, you must have hated that, but is that the secret to your coffee skills?” Margo asks. 

“More or less. Making the stuff was fun, dealing with people not so much. They didn’t put me on register often, for obvious reasons.” Belatedly, Quentin’s brain catches up with part of Eliot’s earlier comment. “Wait, you were making nice with the clinic nurses? Why exactly?” 

Eliot laughs, and then Quentin feels his hair being ruffled by a familiar warm touch, cinnamon-ginger-nutmeg filling his mouth - looking at Eliot he can see him twiddling his fingers, just a little. “Because, dear Q, I never knew if I might need to sneak you out or argue to stay past visiting hours. Just in case I did, I knew it’d be easier to pull off if they liked me.” 

“That makes sense, but why didn’t you ever mention it?” 

“... I think I forgot.” 

Margo laughs at both of them, which they probably deserve.

Of course, nice as it is to joke around, it really doesn’t solve their problem. “So we definitely both want magical work?” he asks, just to confirm.

“Or non-spell work among magicians, yes,” Eliot says with a nod. “I worked for a theater company in Brooklyn one summer during undergrad that was basically a stealth hedge coven. I say stealth because I’m pretty sure there were classicals and casters and the unaffiliated like myself drifting through, and no one ever asked us to swear any loyalties but there was a lot of spell-swapping happening. Also spells in the theater set-up, anywhere we could get away with it looking like cool Muggle effects. Which is more often than you’d think. People see what they expect to see.”

It occurs to Quentin, not for the first time, that there’s a lot about the real, day-to-day magical world he’s missed, by going from Brakebills to Fillory to private crises to trying to play speed chess against gods and monsters. “What happened to the company?” he asks, flipping a coin over and under his fingers as he thinks. 

“Relocated to Philadelphia, which wouldn’t be my choice even though their theater scene is decent - I have a hunch that they were chased out. In hindsight, probably by Marina, but I didn’t know that at the time. That was right before senior year of undergrad, and of course Brakebills came calling before I had to figure out a post-undergrad life.” 

“New York is going to be a much better place for magicals with Kady running the show, from what I’ve heard about Marina Andrieski,” Margo agrees. “Did anyone ever find out what happened to her Timeline 23 counterpart?” She looks at Quentin, who shrugs. 

“I heard she said she didn’t want to get more tangled up in our shit, which I assume is how Kady got the penthouse free and clear. From what Jules said, Original Marina’s death was well known enough - her lackey is lackeying for Kady now - that I’m guessing New Marina can’t take her place here. Either way, not our problem, right?” Quentin says. 

“Generally, no, but if we’re going to settle ourselves in the local magical community, an idea of the players never goes too wrong,” Eliot says, drumming his fingers on the counter. “But yeah, I say you’re right, Q. We start with the people you know at the clinic, go from there. I might still have a few names from Brakebills -  _ might _ , I’ll check.” 

“I have some I won’t be using anytime soon,” Margo adds. “I won’t need them in Fillory.” 

“How is that going anyway? The joint monarchy with Fen thing?” Quentin asks.

Margo shrugs. “It’s going? We’re still sorting out the after-effects of the time fuckery, which is that most people did get back to the right times, but we do have a small crowd of time-displaced people. Some of them did it on purpose, even; they’d met someone from one of the other segments, chose on purpose to stay in the wrong place. Which, you know, they consented, if they wanna be Steve Rogers I’m cool with that, it’s just a little weird. We have palace staff from the wrong century. Actually, a lot of the palace staff are from the wrong century. Did you know the new Tick Pickwick is exactly as frustrating as the old one? Younger, though.”

“Didn’t know, not surprised. We met a Pickwick back in the day, didn’t we, El?” Quentin says, mentally poking at the hazy memory. A lot of the Mosaic is flashes and sense memory, and even the vivid events - which are plenty of them, really - have a soft-edged dreamy quality to them, like if real life could be in watercolors. 

Things like randomly meeting ancestors of people they’d known in Fillory of the present are dim if remembered at all. Just not important enough.

“His wagon broke a mile from our place, yeah. Arrogant fuck, if I remember right, bragging about how his cousin was the Regent of Fillory or whatever the hell it was,” Eliot says, rolling his eyes. “It’s bred into the Pickwick bloodline to be irritating, let me tell you. I was five seconds from telling him to go get the Leo Blade and I could depose his cousin, but that seemed like a bad idea.” 

“ _ Seemed _ like,” Quentin repeats, deadpan, even though they both know - and Margo almost certainly does too - that Eliot would have done no such thing. They still haven’t talked about it fully, or if they did it’s one of the memories lost to time magic not being able to restore everything, but Quentin knew all along that whatever it came to mean later, becoming High King was something Eliot did because he had no choice and setting himself up for that again isn’t a thing he’d wanted then. Or now if it somehow came up.

“Well, anyway,” Margo continues, rolling her eyes at them both, “so we’re dealing with that, and also it turns out two former short-lived monarchs Niffined out, which means Fen walked into the throne room to find a pair of naked unconscious people after we did our spell. They’re not healthy enough to be a problem yet, but we’ll see how that goes. We’re checking to see if there are any others, I talked to Quinn last week about the tracking system she’s setting up here but nothing’s final yet.”

“What oth- oh, you think maybe some of the missing third-year class?” Eliot asks as he turns back to his vegetable chopping. 

“Could be. Anyway, seems better to check, you know?” Margo sighs, stretching along the couch and swinging her legs up so that her feet are in Quentin’s lap.

She’s developing a habit of that. “You’re developing a habit of this,” he tells her. “Do I have footrest written on my forehead?” 

“I could put it there,” Margo says. 

“No thank you, High King, ma’am.” 

“You never High Kinged me,” Eliot calls, mock-affronted. 

“She’s scarier than you are,” Quentin says, laughing. “Also, I had to convince you to have a coronation, how was I supposed to know that would be your thing?” It… was kind of one of Quentin’s things from high school onward, daydreaming about a certain method of pledging fealty when he imagined being a knight of Fillory instead of a king, or, well… 

Yes, all right, fine, there had definitely been thoughts about how a secondary king sworn to his High King should display his loyalty, but he’s not about to  _ admit that _ , now is he.

They get a little wine-drunk before the night’s through, which leads to Eliot and Margo dancing across the living room floor, Quentin setting his phone up to film it and then just leaning back to watch instead, feeling lazy and warm. And happy, in a way still vaguely alien. 

Later, he imagines he’ll watch the video on his phone and try to draw it. Or maybe try to paint it, he’s been thinking he might try painting of one kind or another. But for now he just wants to enjoy watching. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

Back in first year, Mentor Week had been… less than pleasant for Eliot, but not entirely unproductive. 

He and Margo had been friends then, but they hadn’t been  _ El & Bambi  _ yet - that had taken the Secrets Trial. So at Mentor Week they hadn’t exactly kept tabs on each other, so he doesn’t know for sure if Margo ever realized he wasn’t joking about having a nun as his mentor. 

Eliot hadn’t known much about nuns at the time. Still doesn’t, really, about nuns or Catholicism in general - he’d grown up in a family of the kind of Protestant that considers Catholics barely a step up from outright heathens. Something about their thing for saints being idolatry or whatever, he hadn’t paid attention at the time and he certainly isn’t interested now. 

Also, he feels like he heard somewhere that girls have to wear tiny wedding dresses for their First Communion, which is just fucking weird, but whatever.

The only nice thing about church growing up had been choir, the chance to sing and not have it be a problem for his father and brothers because unlike plays, this was for God. Eliot sort of assumes he’d have felt the same growing up Catholic, except the church aesthetics would have been prettier.

All this to say that he had been woefully unprepared for Sister Ellen. For one thing, he didn’t know she was a nun at first, because she showed up in slacks and a t-shirt. She just looked like a serious old lady, maybe a librarian or something. Turned out she taught high school, so maybe not that far off. And Eliot bets she was a fucking hard-ass as a teacher, because she spent the whole damn week putting him through his magical paces while frowning at his clothes in disapproval. 

Eliot had gritted his teeth and kicked up the queer lush vibe deliberately, draping himself all over his current boytoy at every opportunity - some knowledge kid whose name Eliot can’t remember, but he did have the prettiest green eyes and he was good with his tongue. Of course, that only got him deeper frowns, though Sister Ellen never quite got around to actually lecturing him on his supposed sins. 

Presumably because, as a magician and a nun, she was on thin ice in that department herself somehow. Or maybe she just hadn’t thought it was her job as a mentor. 

What she did think was her job as a mentor was making him run through every goddamn spell he’d ever learned, over and over. Having him test every limit she could think of for his telekinesis. At the end of the week, Eliot had a constant headache and a low-grade desire to commit homicide. 

“You have a great deal of potential, if you ever decide to properly apply yourself,” had been Sister Ellen’s final verdict. “When you decide to stop messing around, this may be a good place to start looking for post-Brakebills training.” She’d given him a business card, and though Eliot had wanted to throw it in her face or incinerate it, he hadn’t. Because the whole point of Mentor Week was to make connections, and he’d be damned if he’d get nothing out of her bullshit. 

That being said, he’d stuck the card in the shoebox that held the few keepsakes he’d brought from Indiana to New York, and then more or less forgotten about it. He’d been a first year then, after all, and contacts meant only for post-graduation weren’t a pressing concern. And, of course, everything went mad in second year and didn’t settle, so the idea of holding down a real job was the furthest thing from his mind even once he was no longer bound to Fillory for the rest of his life.

But, of course, things are different now. He and Quentin have finally settled the last of their major crises, which means they have to be adults now. Including the job thing. So, Eliot digs out the old shoebox and finds the card underneath his high school diploma. (He’d only stayed in Indiana long enough to get that thing, damn right he took it with him.)

**_Yolande Brooks, wardsmith._ **

Eliot’s always been good at wards. Even as a teenager, when all he’d found online from LiveJournal’s hidden spellcasting communities were homebrew confusion and do-not-notice spells that kept his parents from seeing most of what he hid in his room, he’d been good at it. Brakebills and his own interest in the subject had only increased that skill. He thinks of it as similar to Quentin’s knack for card magic - not a discipline but something that somehow comes easily.

Still… He’s never given much thought to the idea of studying them formally, as a career path. He knows there’s potentially real money in it - there are even Muggles who, one way or another, are aware enough of the magical world to want their homes, cars, or belongings protected with magic. 

“But most magicians can do at least the basic wards,” he tells Quentin that night on the couch. Eliot’s got his head in Quentin’s lap and Quentin is playing with his hair. For some reason, they have a documentary on where cameras hidden inside animatronic animals catch the hidden behavior of various species. Currently, there is a robot wolf puppy trying to convince real wolf pups to welcome it. 

He’s not sure why this is on, exactly, but it is vaguely amusing. “Did you pick this show, Quentin?” 

“No, I was flipping channels and then you flopped onto my lap and started talking about how you have a card for a wardsmith your first year mentor thought might apprentice you. But it is kind of funny and makes for good background noise?” 

“Fair enough. Anyway, back on topic, most magicians can do basic wards. Even when they can’t make them stick in pure magic they find a way - I knew a woman once who warded her house by making the ivy grow on it in particular patterns. Pretty sure the way her garden was laid out played a role too.”

“Sure, obviously,” Quentin says. “But, El, I don’t think you realize just how much power you put into the wards here. I literally taste it when I come in the door. Imagine what you could do if you knew how to really weave them together, expert shit like that instead of just layering them. I remember from classes that a lot of people can’t even do  _ that  _ without shorting them all out. You’re good at it, and you like it, don’t you?” 

Actually, yes. He does. For Eliot, shaping wards feels a lot like telekinesis, the energy at his fingertips feeling only a little less comfortable than his discipline. Most magic buzzes against his skin, the feeling odd to uncomfortable depending on the type, but telekinesis is just warmth and a click of  _ rightness _ . When he’s building a ward, it’s a fizzing that always feels odd, yes, but pleasant too. Fire magic is a zing, but almost like the tactile equivalent of nicely sour candy.

Telekinesis, fire, and wards. There’s got to be something there, in that combination, right? Quentin says his magic is a warm red and tastes like sweet spices, but Eliot doesn’t know how much of Quentin’s sensory ability is psychosomatic - that the way people’s magic hits his perception is influenced by how he feels about them.

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt,” Eliot says finally.

As luck would have it, Yolande Brooks’ address is in Brooklyn - apparently she works from home, from a townhouse several levels fancier than the converted one Eliot and Quentin live in. But it’s not that far, close enough in fact that Eliot can walk there. So he calls and makes an appointment, and on the set day he’s able to walk over, his leg behaving enough that no cane is necessary. 

Oddly, Eliot almost wishes it was, because he’s more nervous than he’d expected to be. To make up for it, he’s even more careful than usual when he picks out his clothes and fixes his hair for the day. Quentin isn’t home, off on a job interview of his own, which didn’t really help either of their nerves. 

Still, Eliot is very good at playing calm, and he’s fairly sure only Margo or Quentin would be able to spot the nerves under the act as he arrives at the fancy townhouse. The second floor has a terrace, and he can just barely see a foot - a woman’s, in a cream-colored sandal - from his angle as he walks up to the porch. He rings the bell and waits, fiddling absently with his opal ring. 

The door opens to reveal a black woman somewhere in her sixties, her short white hair bright against her dark skin. She’s tiny too, shorter than Margo even, and her sandals are flats. “Eliot Waugh, I take it?” Her eyes are a dark enough brown to almost be black, and she’s looking at him like she can see right through him. 

It’s a little intimidating, height aside.

“Yes,” he says with his most charming smile. “Ms. Brooks?” 

A quick nod. “Hm. Come on in then.” 

She offers him tea, some kind of herbal blend Eliot doesn’t recognize, and then proceeds to interrogate him as efficiently as anyone he’s ever known, all the more effectively because she does it with questions that sound  _ kind _ . Also, there are tea cakes. 

He’s kind of terrified. But he answers her questions about the things he studied at Brakebills and the stuff he picked up before Brakebills. She doesn’t ask too much about why he stopped attending school, skipping around that so obviously that finally Eliot has to say, “I thought I’d get more questions about why I dropped out.” 

“I don’t care for Brakebills’ current methodology under Henry Fogg - come to think of it, I didn’t like the way his predecessor ran things either,” Yolande says evenly. “I don’t care if you have your degree from there or not. Furthermore, I know who you are, and while I’m certain the stories circling around the magical community don’t tell the half of it, I’m aware you were a king in Fillory, that your little coven caused both magic’s failure and its return, earning itself trouble with the Library in the process. And I hear vaguer rumors of possession, time magic, and alternate realities. Not to mention the recent surges and… strange weather, shall we say?” 

Yolande sips her tea, surveying Eliot over the rim of her cup as he feels the blood drain from his face. “You didn’t know that your group was a topic of conversation in the larger community, did you?” 

“No,” Eliot admits, because he’d been too shocked to pretend otherwise and trying now would look bad. Shit, is that why she agreed to meet with him? What about Quentin’s interview? Should they pack up and go to Fillory after all, even if neither of them want to?

“Well, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Most people don’t know your names, and truthfully, now that things are calm, fewer care. But the first thing you should learn from me is that the powerful and the unusual draw attention, and that coven of yours is both.” 

“The first thing?” Eliot says cautiously. 

“Possibly the only, but I haven’t decided yet.” Yolande sets down her cup and gets up, so Eliot follows suit. “Come with me, and we will have a trial. I need to see what you can do, not just hear about it.”

For the next two hours, Yolande Brooks has Eliot cast every ward he knows, as well as the battle magic shield they’d learned back when they were preparing for the Beast, and for some reason the two luck spells he knows. When he’s done the second of those, he has to ask, “What do luck spells have to do with protection?” 

“I am a wardsmith, not just your typical wardmaker. That means my work includes designing brand new wards tailored to specific needs, but it also includes their opposite. Fetches, which are essentially more elaborate versions of things like luck or summoning spells. They draw energies, or they can draw people. In the wrong hands, they are exceedingly dangerous. But as the reverse of wards, fetches are something a true wardsmith must be fully capable of creating.”

“Because fetches draw in, but wards push away. To do one you have to do the other,” Eliot says. “Makes sense.” 

“Correct. What is your discipline, Eliot? And beyond that, what comes easiest to you - what do you have a natural affinity for?”

“I’m a telekinetic,” Eliot says, feeling suddenly tense. There’s something in what Yolande just said, in what he just summarized, and in his own thoughts that his skill sets must be somehow connected. “And after that, fire magic comes easiest.”

Yolande nods. “That makes sense. Those are the physical disciplines best suited to ward-work. Can you tell me why?” 

All Eliot can think of is a bus hitting a child, of flame coming easily to his hand to burn a book. The violence the Monster did with his body, his hands, his magic, all of that was already in Eliot without the Monster. “I have no idea,” he says honestly. He knows the general theory of disciplines making a person suited to particular branches of magic, but he’s not sure how that applies here. 

All he should be good for is battle magic, looking at his best skills, right? 

Yolande sighs, but she doesn’t seem disappointed. “Telekinesis and fire magic are both equally good at defense or destruction. You can use telekinesis to throw someone into a wall, yes, or use fire magic to commit arson, but it is equally likely that you are lighting candles to see by, or a fire for warmth and comfort. Telekinesis can allow you to catch hold of someone to save them from some danger, or to express affection. There are wards that not only repel danger, but attack a threat. Have you heard of those?” 

Eliot nods. “They were banned at Brakebills and I never found others, so I don’t know any, but I’ve heard they exist,” he says tightly, head spinning. Defense or destruction… he’d never - never thought of - but maybe… 

It’s an idea, anyway. 

“Yes, although very much in use on the grounds. And very few Internet homebrews exist that can do it, so I’m not surprised you didn’t find any there.” Yolande eyes him again, and once more Eliot feels as if she can see all the way through him, possibly even the thoughts in his head. But he has his pride and stubbornness, so he doesn’t let himself look away.

“Six months as a trial apprenticeship,” Yolande says with a curt nod. “You’ll assist me and be paid as such, while learning the in-depth work I specialize in. We’ll reconsider at the end of the six months - not everyone with an aptitude finds themselves suited to the work, so that trial period has become my standard.”

She offers a hand and Eliot shakes it. The rest is technical details - exact pay, hours, specific duties, that sort of thing. The almost-mundane practicality of it grounds him, helps him find himself again. 

And so he leaves with a job. A job, and far too much to think about.

He makes it a week before Quentin says, “So, you’ve been in kind of a funk ever since Yolande took you on, is something wrong, El?” 

They’re in the living room, Quentin with his sketchbook and Eliot actually with a book - stuff Yolande is going to be quizzing him on - that he sets aside, frowning down at his hands until Quentin reaches for them. “You’re getting charcoal on me,” Eliot says quietly. 

“You usually don’t mind. Hey, talk to me? Please? I’m starting to worry.” 

Eliot sighs, thinking about pulling away. But the truth is he doesn’t really want to. “I just…” So he tells Quentin what Yolande said about telekinesis and fire magic, how they are equally capable of destruction or defense, harm or comfort. “Since I was fourteen I knew that what I’m best at is fucking killing - it was so easy to snap Mike’s neck, even easier to burn his book so I didn’t have to look at it. And she’s trying to tell me… It doesn’t fit, Q.” 

“I mean. Far be it from me to tell you what your magic is, but… I think it does, actually. I mean, that is you, Eliot. You’ll do anything if you’re defending Margo or me, and thank God that applies in your own self-defense enough that you’ve made it this far, self-destructive tendencies or no. And yes I know I have no high ground on the latter but I’m making a point here. It’s like I said, you’ve got this place warded to the gills because you want it to be safe. That’s what you do, El.” 

“Logan -” 

“There’d be something wrong with you if it didn’t bother you, but you had no idea a stray thought could be anything but that. And Mike… what choice did you have? There wasn’t time, was there?” 

Eliot can’t argue that. “It just… feels strange. The idea that the magic I always saw as purely for destruction actually makes me suited to build things to protect people with.”

“My mother thinks I break everything. One ashtray and I’m forever condemned. My discipline is the exact opposite. Maybe… maybe that’s the way to look at it. Because half the time I believe her, but now I can sort of hold onto my magic to remind myself it’s not that simple. Maybe that’s what this means for you? That it’s not as simple as the worst parts? You just have to know how to see the good stuff.” 

“That’s not really my skill set,” Eliot points out. “More your thing than mine.” 

“The fact that you consider me an optimist is both endearing and mildly alarming,” Quentin replies. “But, yeah, maybe - it helps, anyway. And maybe this is what you need, to see what you can really do. Not just what you’re afraid you’ll do, but the things you never thought of?”

“You like my telekinesis. You basically have a kink for it. So you’re a little biased here.” 

Quentin shrugs. “Sure, because it’s you doing it. I like that you can touch me without touching me, whether it’s kinky or you ruffling my hair. Or just reminding me you’re there, like the first day I walked with the prosthetic. But that’s what I mean. You accidentally caused something horrible when your power manifested, of course it feels like that’s all it’s for. But it isn’t. You already act on that, even if you didn’t know it. This is just… understanding that for real.”

“Maybe,” Eliot says, and thankfully Quentin doesn’t push him on it.  _ Maybe  _ is the best comment he has to offer right now, but… It is a thought, isn’t it? Not as simple as the worst parts. Equally suited to defense and destruction. 

That could be him, maybe. That could be him, growing up. 

Maybe.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

Quentin might have said he’s not sure he’s ready for a full-blown relationship yet, but that hadn’t stopped him from saying yes when Eliot suggested they share a room. He’d moved into Eliot’s, because they’d put him back in the room he’d claimed back when he’d first gotten here. In other words, the same room the Monster used to invade at night. 

Someone had packed away his things and only taken down the boxes without unpacking them, and the bedspread had been different, so between that and the fact that until recently he’d been too unsteady to care, Quentin had coped with being in the same room. But leaving had definitely been an easy choice. The rooms are similar, but Eliot’s has a view of a completely different part of the skyline, which helps more than Quentin might have expected.

His stuff is unpacked now too, his clothes in the dresser while Eliot’s are in the closet.

And they both sleep a lot better wrapped around each other, but that’s always been true, even when they accidentally ended up cuddling on top of Eliot’s covers because Eliot was awake stealth-studying and Quentin was up being an insomniac. They used to decide it was better to be awake in company, and invariably would doze off to wake up half covered in books and cuddling each other.

Obviously, curling up together under the blankets is better by far. 

The truth is they  _ are  _ dating, it’s just that they don’t actually… go on dates, right now. Or have sex. They’ve both been through hell and back, so between that and Quentin’s general health concerns, it’s easier to just… be quiet together, more days than not.

Although, there was a nice side effect from the major mending they did. Quentin isn’t sure how it happened but when he woke up, he didn’t need his walker anymore. He’s still using a cane, a clear blue one that he bought himself on a whim. He still can’t talk, but he’s beginning to adjust to that. Beginning to realize he might never actually get his voice back, which he’s not happy about, but… 

It has occurred to him that his voice might be the cost for his life, and it sucks, sure, but… Every day he gets stronger, every day he finds he can eat more normal foods - sweet foods are easier than spicy, even sickly-sweet hard candies, which obviously are terrible for him but an easy test food. So if all he loses for good is his voice… 

_ It won’t cost much, just your voice! _

Quentin is no Ariel, but he can’t get that little bit of the song out of his head. It’s a high cost but on balance it’s not so bad. It helps that he and Eliot  _ are  _ dating, even if they’re kind of going about it like either middle schoolers or old men, Quentin’s not sure which label applies better. He’s very deliberately not worrying about it either. 

For once, he’s awake before Eliot on a morning when he actually slept the night before, about two weeks after the mending spell. He could stay in bed, and part of him even wants to because it’s still annoyingly early, but he woke feeling vaguely restless. 

As he levers himself up with his cane, his hair falls in front of his eyes and he has a moment of thinking, was it always that color? He pushes the thought aside, telling himself it’s just because of the dream. 

In his dream he was back in his childhood backyard, standing upright on steady legs with no cane in sight, feeling more solidly himself than he had since he came back. And Julia had been there...

_ “Is this real?” Quentin asks, then claps a hand over his mouth. He can talk again?  _

_ “It’s a dream, but it’s a real conversation,” Julia says. Her eyes are silver now, just like Other-Julia’s, and she’s in a long, flowing purple dress. There are asphodel flowers in her hair, and Quentin realizes she must have achieved the demigoddess status she wanted. “Lady Macaria won’t let me leave the Underworld just yet, but I wanted to talk to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, Q.”  _

_ “We could have used a warning,” Quentin says reproachfully. “Alice in particular deserved a warning, Jules. Even for good news.” _

_ “I know. I didn’t have a choice, believe me. Just like I don’t now, with the whole being gone thing. There might be some other changes, I don’t know everything yet. But just in case, I wanted…” She crosses the space between them and hugs him tightly. Quentin can’t help but hug her back, tasting her champagne magic as he does, smelling her favorite lemon shampoo.  _

_ Except, no - strawberry, like when they were kids. And for a second he could swear they  _ **_are_ ** _ kids, twelve years old and hugging like they did when Quentin’s parents got divorced, when Julia’s dad was sent away. Twelve was just not a good age, really, for either of them, but it was a significant one.  _

_ Maybe that’s why Alice’s golem was twelve. _

_ Then Julia steps back and they’re adults again. “You have a whole life ahead of you, Q. A whole second chance. All of you do, and so do I, it’s just mine might be somewhere else.”  _

_ “Julia…” Quentin wants to ask her not to go, to stay with them, but that’s - that’s brutally unfair, he knows that. So he takes a deep breath and says, “Are you happy?” _

_ “I really am, Q. The magic, it’s - it’s even better than when I was becoming a goddess because I understand it. From the beginning, I know what’s happening, I can harness it, and I can do it without giving up  _ **_me_ ** _. But I still might not be back for a while, and I just…” Julia reaches forward, brushes back a bit of Quentin’s hair. “There are thirty-eight of you down in the Underworld. Niffin Boy got a second chance too, or it’d be thirty-nine. Seeing them, I... I wanted to see you, to tell you - there’s so much coming for you, you just have to hang on.”  _

_ Quentin smiles at her. “I will, Jules. I promise. I already decided I won’t let myself give up again. I’ll do whatever I need to for it, I swear.”  _

_ “Good. Now wake up and go back to your life. We’ll meet again, I promise.” _

And Quentin had woken up with tears in his eyes and a restless energy sparking through his blood. He gets up so he won’t wake Eliot with his fidgets, going out to the living room. He left his laptop out there so he plugs in the charger and starts another sign language video tutorial. He tries not to think about how his fingers seem just a little too long, a little unreal.

He’s just fussing. He’s starting to feel better physically, so now his brain is poking him about the fact that he knows this isn’t his original body. It doesn’t matter. Alice is on her second body too, and Eliot said being in a golem was exactly the same as being in his own body. Except for a few weird things like a clearer nose. 

But Quentin doesn’t have his scars anymore. And his hair is - it’s lighter than it was, he’s sure of it, it’s different somehow and he can’t put his finger on it. Like maybe a little red got into it from the dyed hair Other-Quentin contributed, or like maybe when Eliot, Alice, and Margo were building it Eliot misremembered his hair from the lighter color it had taken on after being sun-bleached in Fillory. 

Or both. Or - 

The video ended. He’s been staring at his galaxy screensaver for how long now? Jesus. Why is this bothering him now? Except he knows why. He’s feeling better, and that dream… He hadn’t felt off-kilter in the dream. So now it’s fucking with his head. This is just an adjustment period, and this is a new phase. He hasn’t had this problem before, and if he can nip it in the bud, it won’t last, right? 

The question being how to do that. 

The door opens, breaking into his thoughts. Or rather, one of the doors opens, because the penthouse living room is Grand Central Station these days, with the Fillory clock and the Library door, and of course hedges who come to see Kady and use the actual front door because they are relatively normal people. 

This time it’s the Library door, Alice coming out in a vivid green dress that Quentin suspects she might be wearing just because it’s not Library-grey. More power to her, he guesses, though he does feel a little disadvantaged in plaid pajama pants and a white undershirt that he might have stolen from Eliot.

(OK, fine, he  _ absolutely  _ stole it, but it’s soft.)

He waves, and makes his slightly wobbly way over to the coffeemaker to set a pot to brewing - it’s a good distraction now that someone else is awake, and also if left to his own devices Quentin would drink way too much.

“Morning, Q,” Alice says, sitting at one of the barstools. “How goes the sign language practice?”

Quentin has taken to leaving notepads and gel pens in the communal areas now so that he doesn’t always have to carry the same one with him.  _ Slowly, but it’s going. Also, I can drink coffee now as long as it’s a small one. _ He demonstrates by getting down a mug for her and one of those little half-size mugs some restaurants use for tea for him. Why Marina had one of those he doesn’t know, but it works for him.

Alice smiles faintly but doesn’t respond, pouring sugar in her coffee and sipping it in silence. Quentin hesitates, then writes,  _ How are things with Charlie? And how are you? _

“My mom’s at Brakebills yesterday and today, which is one reason I’m not there - all we do is fight if we’re in one room too long and Charlie can’t handle it right now, it really upsets him,” Alice says, fiddling with her glasses. “She lost him too, and she - preferred him, you know? I’m trying to be gracious but considering that after about ten minutes I want to hex her, the best way to do that in this scenario is to not be there when she is. So I’m taking advantage of the time to handle some business because honestly when she’s not there it’s hard to leave him. He’s not angry like I was, more _ confused _ , so I brought him photo albums and I made a glass horse for him. I've been telling him stories of our growing up, and sometimes he even chimes in.” 

Maybe he shouldn’t push, but he’s worried and they are friends again. More, maybe, than they ever were before, too new to each other and too prickly, Alice too wary and Quentin easily distracted. So he underlines  _ And how are you? _ raising his eyebrows at her.

“I’m… it brings back memories. How could it not? It’s not just Charlie, either, it’s all of them. They’re not all reacting quite like I did, but it’s… I’ve been trying to help Lipson and the other healers by writing down everything I remember about what it was like. Reference for them, you know? But at the same time I… It’s selfish but I keep thinking, I’m not the only one now. And maybe when they’ve begun to heal, it might be good for all of us, that there’s enough to be a tiny community of people, you know?”

_ I don’t think that’s selfish at all, actually. I think it makes perfect sense. _

“Thanks, Q,” Alice says with a tired sigh. Quentin wants to help, but aside from offering more coffee or the last double-chocolate muffin, there’s probably not too much he can do. He does do both of those things, and gets Alice’s softer smile for his efforts, the one that he only saw a handful of times, but once would have given the world to get. Things are different now, but it still warms something deep inside to get her to smile like that.

“Half the problem, with Charlie, is that he remembers me as almost seventeen, which is how old I was when he left for Brakebills. Coming back to me in my mid-twenties is throwing him off, I think. He doesn’t remember the day you boxed him at all, or the glass horses he left me. That’s probably for the best, and I can’t remember everything from being a Niffin either so hopefully he never does remember. The things I remember most clearly are the stuff from when I was in your tattoo, I think because being bound to you made those memories more human brain compatible or something.” 

Alice takes a bite of muffin as Quentin gets an apple cinnamon one for himself. “It’s just… It’s a lot. And then there’s all the others, and there’s literally no one but me with the expertise to help them. None of the magical schools have the capacity to help long-term, the Library does, but it’s not exactly an environment conducive to healing, you know? It’s more than a little overwhelming to have… all this to think about.” 

Quentin has absolutely no idea what to say to that, and apparently he doesn’t actually need to say shit because Alice just continues, “I want to do it. I mean - I wish there’d been someone who knew what I was going through when it was me, for one thing, and for another… Out in Modesto I got a glimpse of how magic can be for good and I want to do something solid and real and that actually does some fucking good. I think this can be part of that, I have the resources and the experience, but.... It’s still a lot.” 

_ Do you remember, _ Quentin writes after a moment,  _ before you Niffined out, when I told you I thought you were the hero of the story and that you should see what you could do, or after you were first back, when I said you were Alice Quinn and you could do anything? _

He waits for her to nod, and then continues.  _ I still believe that, you know. You can absolutely do this - but also, you’re not alone. It’s… that seems to be the thing we keep finding. It’s something I was actually told at the start of this. _ And the memory of Eliot telling him that is still so vivid, but he doesn’t get specific because that’s not what’s needed here. Instead, he continues,  _ I guess I’m saying, I’m sure you’ve got this, but also, is there anything I can do to help? _

Alice actually laughs. “Look who suddenly has perspective,” she says. “Why didn’t I get that?” 

_ Not worth it. There isn’t even a t-shirt. _

“And you love t-shirts, don’t you?” Alice says dryly. Neither of them mention the fact that when Quentin got some of his things back, they smelled like her soap, and a little bit like menthol cigarettes, which confuses him a little but he’d have to ask about all of it if he asked about that much. So he doesn't.

He doesn’t smoke anymore - his body can barely handle coffee so nicotine in his system and smoke in his lungs seems… inadvisable. He’ll probably do his best not to pick it back up again, because one advantage to the new body means none of his existing dependencies came back with him. Which is the only reason he avoided caffeine withdrawal. 

(It also suggests, given that his depression  _ did  _ come back with him, as far as he can tell when it’s relatively dormant at this moment, that Penny’s implication that it’d be gone if he crossed over was bullshit.)

“Anyway, some of the returned Niffins are actually reacting more like you did when we brought you back, so I think you can help,” Alice says, “but we have some time to talk about that. I’m actually here to meet with Margo, because first of all she has some ex-Niffins in her custody and second, I have an idea about Fillory.” 

Quentin wants to ask what that idea is, but that’s when the clock door opens and Margo steps through, so he decides to just hold off and listen. That will probably answer the question for him, after all.

While he’s listening, though, his eyes fall on his own arm, on a place where there used to be a thin white scar, and now there’s nothing. For a moment, Quentin feels himself starting to fall into the earlier worry but - no. No, he doesn’t want to do that. But he can’t stand that blank bit of skin. Strange, how once he’d have enjoyed erasing his scars and now it makes him feel kind of sick. 

So he takes a mug full of his spice tea - he finished his tiny coffee and he can’t have more yet, but the tea is safe - and goes over to the couch, forcing himself to breathe slow and even. Once settled, he takes his notepad back out, along with one of his gel pens. A gel pen.

Green, this time. 

Maybe…

By the time footsteps announce Eliot’s presence, Quentin has drawn a leaf on his arm, big enough to cover the old places of three different scars. It’s not permanent, of course - gel ink washes off easily - but for now, it makes him breathe more easily, enough so that he can tune back into the conversation in the kitchen, enough that he can pull out his sketchbook and colored pencils instead. But this time, he thinks it’s designs he wants to draw, designs that maybe he can put on his skin later?

The idea helps him smile up at Eliot as he walks by.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

Eliot wakes up to find himself alone in bed, which is something of a surprise because usually he’s up before Quentin. He doesn’t bother to dress, just pulls on one of his robes over his underwear and makes his way out to the living room because he smells coffee. Also, he hears voices, which turn out to be Margo, Alice, and surprisingly Kady - Eliot had thought Kady was in Philadelphia, though he supposes it’s a fairly quick commute even by Muggle methods. 

Quentin, meanwhile, is curled up on the couch with a mug of tea beside him on the coffee table, sketchbook in hand. Eliot had been a little surprised the other day when a delivery had come full of drawing supplies - sketchbooks, pencils, colored pencils, and a drawing case - but since then, if Quentin isn’t armed with one of his notepads or his laptop, out comes the sketchbook.

It reminds Eliot of Quentin at the Mosaic with chalk on his hands, or Other-Quentin with his charcoals and pastels. But different too, which is a relief and Eliot also knows is intentional on Quentin’s part, because he’d asked. 

Eliot can also see that for some reason Quentin drew a leaf on his arm. He should probably ask about that one later.

Kady got breakfast from the bakery around the corner, so Eliot goes for coffee and a chocolate croissant, pausing only to give Margo a one-armed hug as he passes her. “Hey, El,” she says, smiling up at him. “We’re working on a game plan for the ex-Niffins and ex-shadeless. They’re moving to Fillory!” 

She says that with a kind of mock cheeriness that makes Alice frown at her. “I mean, if you’re honestly against the idea…” 

“No, tucking them away in that lakeside castle no one uses is probably for the best,” Margo says airily. “Although I’m not sure what the ex-shadeless need it for.” 

“Most of them don’t,” Kady says with a sigh. “Like I said before, Niffins were more common among classicals and shadeless among hedges, casters seem to skew toward Niffins too but not as much, Point is, most of the ex-shadeless have a support system in place, or can fit into an Earth-based one if it’s offered to them because they’re not time-displaced. There’s only a couple who might really benefit from going with the ex-Niffins.” 

“Why Fillory, exactly?” Eliot asks, leaning against the counter and folding his arms. “I’ll always have a soft spot for the place, but it’s not exactly my first thought for an intensive recovery retreat or whatever the game plan here is.”

“It should minimize the culture shock,” Alice explains. 

Which actually makes sense, and selfishly Eliot is on board with the plan because it means Margo is sticking around Earth-side for the next little while, giving her and Alice time to work out… transportation logistics, and shit like that. Quentin is enlisted too, to write down everything about his experience with readjusting to being a living person with a body because apparently some of the ex-Niffins are reacting a lot like he did. Eliot has some thoughts on that related to his first days post-possession, and some thoughts on the lakeside castle Margo’s offering up as Niffin Retreat Headquarters.

It feels like old times, it feels like times they never quite had, not quite, but close - the surroundings are different and they’re all older, Penny isn’t there and Quentin is but still voiceless. In spite of the differences, though, with Kady rarely there it’s usually Eliot and Margo, Quentin and Alice, and this feels familiar. Like second year before Fillory, like the earliest days in Fillory, but a little like the Mosaic too, a little like a certain road trip quest.

Of course, in almost all those other times, he didn’t have Quentin tucked in against him like a warm oversized cat more often than not, and Margo wasn’t fresh off a breakup with her own much less appealing nerd boy and idly considering seducing Alice, but they were several years younger the last time the four of them were the main team too. 

(Actually, the Margo considering seducing Alice thing is not entirely new, but he isn’t sure Alice knows that. Or Quentin, for that matter, who watches Margo watch Alice with a kind of bewildered amusement.)

As for Eliot? He finds himself in the bathroom one morning staring at his reflection. The shaggy hair, the beard he’s kept just trimmed enough to not be in the way and no further, the black pants and waistcoat, the purple shirt dark as a bruise. Most of the clothes he’d bothered to get from storage at Brakebills look like this, blacks and greys or colors in shades so dark they might as well be more black. It had suited his mood, it had felt right to try for the Victorian widower aesthetic when he was -

When he couldn’t make the confession he’d planned to, when the only way to declare at all was to declare as a widower, silently and between the lines. 

He kind of wants to set fire to the clothes, now. But he’d kept them, telling himself he was too busy to fuss with it, too busy to stop for a haircut and keeping the beard, well. That was just practical, wasn’t it? Practical, when he spent so much time with his counterpart in his jewel-toned clothes with his neat hair and clean-shaven face. Eliot’s beard and darker clothes helped identify him when he was in a room with his counterpart, who...

Who had his  _ home  _ and his  _ partner _ , and a tiny bit of Eliot had been savagely glad to not be as well put together, to make Other-Eliot (and Other-Quentin, if he’s being honest) look and see just what could have so easily been. He hadn’t let himself see it before, but now he can admit it. Now that it’s over, the red braid mark on his wrist a reminder of that if he ever needs one - he doesn’t, but alone and looking at his own reflection, he likes having it, likes brushing his thumb over it to find that bit of skin runs a little warmer than the rest of him. 

But that’s for him. That’s only for him, and for Quentin because he has his own mark. What Eliot needs is to fix… all this mess. This isn’t him, not now. This will never be him again, if he has anything to say about it.

A knock at the door makes him jump. “El, something wrong?” 

And Eliot has to laugh, because apparently the El-and-Bambi wavelength is back online. He opens the door with a lopsided smile. “Can you help me with my hair?” Margo had done a summer stint at a cosmetology school right before going off to college. Eliot’s understanding is that it was more to piss her father off than anything, but the upshot is that there’s a reason Margo’s hair and makeup game is flawless. 

“You’re lucky one of the things I stashed here from Brakebills storage was my kit,” Margo says, pushing him to sit down on the closed toilet before she goes to get her bag. 

Eliot feels better even before he looks in the mirror, after Margo’s done, just from the lightness of his head. Quentin once said the opposite, that he likes the weight of longer hair, and Eliot gets that, but the way he can feel the lack of weight is every bit as comforting as the heaviness is for his boyfriend. 

The curls are a mess, of course, a damp loose tumble, but that’s what product is for. Not just yet, though, as Eliot eyes the black pants and the black and dark-dark purple waistcoat hanging on the door. At least the shirt is white, which will work with… Hm. 

Along the way to becoming himself, Eliot learned a lot of clothing related magic. Tailoring spells, laundry spells, and a few really nifty ones designed to make the wardrobe of a broke college student look a lot more varied than it was. It’s easier to change shade than it is to do a complete redesign, and he’s a little rusty, so… 

“Oh, I like this one,” Margo says from where she’s perched on the bathtub. Margo has an aunt who’s a hedge, which Eliot presumes is how she knew magical bank robbery methods - he meant to get the whole story but somehow never did; he reminds himself to do that - but she never quite got the hang of this one. She’s a little shaky with object spells sometimes for a physical kid, but she kicks ass at elemental ones. Different sections of the discipline, and all. She likes watching Eliot do this one though. 

(And she can do hair dye casts like a fucking pro, whereas that time Eliot tried is… best never spoken of again in any lifetime.)

Truthfully, Eliot likes watching it too, as he slides his palms past each other and then locks his wrists for the spell. Color spills over the cloth like cream in coffee, turning the black pants to a purple-undertoned pale grey. As for the waistcoat, bruise-dark purple becomes lavender and the black patterning shifts to matte silver.

Dressed, he fixes his hair. Different than before, sort of swept to one side and looking more tousled than the neat fluffy curls or straightened looks he’d gone for once, because he’s - not that anymore either. “Well?” he asks, meeting Margo’s eyes in the mirror even as he slips two playing cards into his vest’s inner pocket. 

“You look great. Renewed even. What’s with the cards?”

He shows her, the card that Quentin made with the King of Diamonds wearing Eliot’s face, and the Jack of Hearts Eliot made to go with it, his jack looking just like Quentin. “I’ve gotten used to carrying them around. Since.” 

Since the bonfire, he means. 

“Since is over now, baby,” Margo says quietly. And she’s right, of course, but he’s still used to carrying them. 

“There’s one more,” he says, holding up the Queen of Diamonds Margo instead of putting it with the other two. Margo blinks, eyes going a little shiny as he turns to face her and not her reflection, handing her card it to her. “I gave Alice hers - Queen of Spades. You and me got to be king and queen together before there were crowns on our heads, according to our little nerd anyway.” 

“Well, of course,” Margo says as she looks at the card. “We were always a king and queen together. El… Are you still - sure about Fillory?” 

And it’s a fair question, isn’t it? He is, for now. He doesn’t want Fillory right now. He’d said that and meant it, and still does. He wants the chance to build a home with Q here, preferably stealing the clock from Kady so Margo can come over much more easily. Fillory is always a mess and Eliot isn’t sure how much mess he’s up for anymore.

But before, when he’d thought Quentin was lost to him forever, he’d had the choice of Earth or Fillory and he’d chosen Fillory. He’d chosen it for Margo but at the same time… He’d been  _ allowed  _ to choose it, or not choose it, for once, and on some level that still means something to him. Extenuating circumstances aside. 

It feels like something he shouldn’t just flip-flop on, as he starts to settle back into himself, as opposed to being strung out on grief and worry. It feels like there should be room for compromise.

“Give me and Q a little more time - I’m with him and he needs to be steadier - and then we’ll talk. Splitting time, or something, maybe. Full time, I’m still gonna say no, but not as absolutely as I did last time.” 

“Well, that’s better news for me. I’m making you both princes, by the way,” Margo says, and Eliot raises his eyebrows in a silent question. She shrugs. “Princes have authority if it’s ever needed but you don’t have to have full-time responsibilities. I’ll probably have to give Alice some rank too - all your appointments were technically voided out when I became the High King, so Q and Alice officially lost theirs then. But if she’s gonna be there a lot… It’s more efficient if she doesn’t need me or Fen to run interference all the time.” 

“And what  _ does  _ High Queen Fen have to say about all that? Also, is Josh’s Fresh Prince thing really an actual title now?” It hadn’t exactly been high on his list of priorities to check, after all, when they’d arrived in time-jumped Fillory and heard the news. 

“Yep, Fen went with it before I could tell him no TV show references. So that makes three princes, but only one of you is screwing higher royalty - no, not me anymore, Josh and Fen apparently. While they were left alone in Fillory.” 

Which means, before the plan Eliot and Margo made to save them. Which means, while she was on Earth trying to keep him from drinking himself to death in the wake of Quentin’s death. “No wonder you broke up with him. I’m surprised you’re getting along with Fen well enough to co-rule.” 

Margo’s smile is more a baring of teeth. “We have an understanding, but Josh and I are very much quits after that shit. They’re still my pack - the whole wolf shit - which I think is making me a little more forgiving, but only to the ‘I can still get along with them’ level. Now, before someone kicks us out of here, shouldn’t you go show off your new look?” 

Alice is alone in the kitchen when they come out, but she’d apparently been waiting for Margo because she says, “Margo, we need to talk about the wards on the castle. Also, Quentin’s outside, if either of you are looking for him.” 

Of course he is. Eliot isn’t even surprised when he spots Quentin through the patio doors, lying on a blanket he put out there, eyes closed with his headphones in his ears. An audiobook probably, or maybe a podcast. Quentin’s taken to doing this, just sitting outside for as long as possible in every kind of weather they’ve had since things settled down. Relearning it, he says. 

Today, being the first day that’s sunny but also nice, as opposed to the sticky-humid heat of a New York summer, Eliot is reminded of nothing so much as a cat lying in a patch of sunlight when he looks at Quentin. So he goes outside, perching on the edge of the chair nearest Quentin and reaching down to trail his fingers over Quentin’s arm. Quentin jumps a little, then blinks his eyes open, sitting up and taking his headphones off. 

Then he stops with his notepad and pen in hand, just staring at Eliot with wide eyes, enough like the boy who once called him a hallucination to make Eliot grin. “What do you think, baby?”

_ You look amazing. Did you go back to Brakebills for more clothes? _

Eliot laughs. “No, there’s this color change spell I know - I’ll show you sometime, actually, you’re better at object-based magic than Bambi is so you might be able to do it. I will need to go get the rest of my shit… or just go shopping,” he adds, grinning when Quentin makes a face. “Oh, cheer up, I won’t make you give advice, but you won’t begrudge me taking you along as a captive audience, will you?” 

_ That, I think I can manage. And I’d love the spell - not the biggest fan of black anymore myself but more than half of my clothes are black. Unlike you I don’t like shopping. And I really do love the look, El. Your hair is probably gonna drive me nuts, I already used to daydream about messing it up and now you’ve half done it for me, you tease. _

Quentin also seems inclined to prove his words, climbing up so he’s honestly half in Eliot’s lap and kissing him, slow and lazy as the day itself promises to be. Eliot hums and leans back in the chair, which is one of those lounging types that you can half lay in. Great for kissing in, though he can’t quite see either Marina or Kady buying furniture with that thought in mind. Feeling mischievous, Eliot grabs for Quentin’s wrists just as Quentin reaches for his hair. “No, no, I just did my hair, no messing with it. And anyway, I’m a tease, right?”

Quentin grumbles - he can make sounds, just somehow can’t talk - and ducks his head, nuzzling Eliot’s neck instead.

“Hi there,” Eliot murmurs in his ear. “If I’d known this would be the reaction I’d have done it sooner.” 

Quentin hesitates as he sits up enough to see Eliot’s face, then lifts his hands instead of going for his notepad.  _ You look happier like this. _ His fingers are halting, clumsy with this new function after only a few weeks of practice. It takes Eliot a moment to understand the signed words for what they are, but when he does… He has to blink back a sudden wash of tears blurring his vision, he has to swallow a lump in his throat. He wonders if Quentin figured out that he wears darker clothes when his mood darkens, or if he just made the more obvious connection to mourning clothes.

“Well, I am happier,” is what he says out loud. And it’s true, he is.  _ Since is over now, _ Margo said, and she’s right. So maybe he - he can - 

Eliot sits up, shifting Q a little so he can reach into his vest and pull out the cards. Quentin, watching curiously, goes wide-eyed at the sight of them. “Julia burned the card with your face, and I… I found Queen of Spades Alice and Queen of Diamonds Margo, I gave them theirs, but… but I carried the card like me, and I made one like you.” Eliot shows him, the King of Diamonds and the Jack of Hearts. Quentin reaches out with trembling fingers, brushing over them but not taking them.

_ When did you find them?  _ he writes.  _ And where’d the one of me come from? I know Julia burned my King of Hearts. Which is fine, that card gets nicknamed the Suicide King and I’m glad it’s gone, I much prefer this, but… _

Jesus. Eliot hadn’t known that about the King of Hearts, but he remembers how the sword that seemed to go through the king’s head had unnerved him when he made the new Quentin card, and he feels a little more justified in it now. “The night of the bonfire. I gave Alice hers ages ago, and I just gave Margo hers but - but these two… I’ve been carrying the one of me around since that night, and when Alice and I were in London waiting on a necromancer consult I bought a deck at a gift shop and I made you as the Jack of Hearts. They - they were a reminder for me, something to carry that was a little bit of you, and a little of me.”

He offers Quentin the Jack of Hearts, and Quentin takes it, but there’s an odd look on his face even as he tucks it safely into a pocket. Eliot doesn’t understand the expression but he decides not to ask. If Quentin somehow disapproves, he finds that he doesn’t really want to know.

Except two nights later, he comes to bed to find Quentin sitting up, two unfamiliar cards in his hand. “Quentin?” Quentin looks up, then holds out the cards.

Eliot takes the new cards and they’re - They must have been the blank ones he knows a few decks have at the back, because Quentin has hand-drawn pictures onto them. A King of Diamonds and a Jack of Hearts again, Eliot as the King and Quentin as the Jack, but… 

But this King of Diamonds has a knight to the side of his throne, and this Jack of Hearts is waving at a man in a tower window. And the knight is Quentin, and the man in the tower is Eliot. Eliot stares at them, then looks back up at Quentin. 

_ The first cards were a reminder, you said. These are a promise, _ Quentin writes, watching Eliot nervously, as if he thinks Eliot doesn’t like the surprise.

And Eliot thinks of crying into Other-Quentin’s shoulder, thinks of how he’d really been talking to the ghost of his own Quentin.  _ Why did you go, you didn’t have to, I was almost home. _ He should be soft and gentle in the face of this sweet, slightly over the top gesture. But Eliot doesn’t feel sweet. 

He pulls Quentin into a crushing hug, hearing him yelp with surprise. “It better be,” he whispers in Quentin’s ear even as Quentin catches up enough to hug him back just as tightly. “Because I’m not losing you again, got that?” 

Quentin can’t really answer without his voice, not unless Eliot lets him go, but he’s not ready to do that. It’s OK; he feels Quentin nod against his chest, and still holding on just as tightly. 

Eliot will take that as answer enough, at least for now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the documentary serving as background noise in the Eliot 40a section really exists; it's called Spy In The Wild, is narrated by David Tennant, and is deeply entertaining.
> 
> Just one more chapter after this! Also, a small promo for the fifth fic in this series, _On the Path Unwinding_ , which tells the story of Timeline 41, so basically it's an s1/s2 AU. :)
> 
> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


	12. See How Bright We Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 40a, Eliot gets a divorce while Quentin runs some errands and gets a job, and both of them make jewelry. In 40b, Eliot and Quentin continue to rebuild themselves, bit by bit, now that they have time to heal. 
> 
> Oh, and both pairs get a sex scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As ever, I hope this finds you well! Starting with the usual warnings, there is discussion of Eliot's abusive childhood and Mike's death, and more on Q 40b's not feeling entirely like he fits in his body yet. I think that's it, if I missed something, let me know. 
> 
> Thanks as ever to Maii for betaing and cheering on, to all my enablers/cheerleaders in two discords, especially El and Ev, and Key for advice on clothes and stones.
> 
> This is all but the end of the story for Queliot in 40a - there is at least one fluffy piece coming for them, you'll understand what about at the end of the chapter, but the plotty part is over for that particular version of Quentin and Eliot. I've been writing them since I began work on _Into the Sky_ over a year ago, and it's bittersweet to be mostly letting them go. Thank you for following them this long. 
> 
> But! The adventures of Quentin and Eliot in 40b aren't over yet, and in Timeline 41, already begun in the next fic of this series, all the adventures are just beginning. I hope you'll stay with us!

**Quentin 40a**

In hindsight, Quentin thinks that it probably shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise that his discipline was mending - or at least that it was object-related. Like Alice said at the time, he’d always been very good at minor mendings, and in general he’s always had a knack for object-based magic. Object summoning, transmutation (or transfiguration), size-change spells, all of it. He’s always been good at it. He once spent an afternoon changing an entire deck of cards; the face cards became his friends, while with the lesser cards he mostly just messed with the colors.

(He has reason to suspect he’d been doing actual magic with his card tricks for years. Sometimes it bugs him to think it wasn’t just his years of practice that made him so good at it, but other times it’s an oddly comforting thought to know magic was there all along.)

It’s the thing he’s best at, but Quentin isn’t really sure how that can translate into a full-time job. He starts asking around at the clinic where he does outpatient therapy, and at first he doesn’t really have much luck. Oh, he gets a few one-off freelance jobs, and Natalie, who isn’t a patient but whose brother Daniel is, works magical freelance herself and helps him figure out reasonable pricing.

“That’s not a bad start,” Eliot insists when Quentin worries about it, and it’s true. Also, there’s still money from his father’s life insurance policy and from selling the house in New Jersey. It’s not like Quentin’s mooching off Eliot or anything. It just feels vaguely crummy, like how he’d decided to get his Master’s in philosophy mostly because he’d figured he was useless for anything but academia. 

The problem is that magical academia means either Brakebills or the Library, and neither of those are exactly appealing. Which leaves Quentin with freelance mending and spell refreshment jobs until he can find a proper job. He’d even consider a Muggle job, but his qualifications for that are even worse. 

It’s chance that shifts things, about a month after Quentin started asking around. Angie Devereaux is one of the physical therapists, but not one whose area of expertise is much help for Quentin. She mostly does treatment for people who are trying to recover more delicate mobility than Quentin - regaining full use of hands, things like that. 

“I hear you’re looking for a full-time job connected to mending,” she says, catching him as he heads out. 

“Uh, yeah. Do you know someone hiring?” Quentin asks. 

“Not purely for mending, no, but have you ever looked into crafting magics?” 

Quentin shakes his head. “I’ve read a little about them, but Brakebills didn’t really…” 

“No, because Brakebills is a whole facility of ivory tower academics,” Angie says dryly. “Nothing wrong with that, I guess, a couple of my cousins are basically that themselves, but it’s not exactly ideal when the whole school is made up of them. I’m told they try to make up for the lack of practicality with mentors, but I’m not convinced.”

Quentin remembers Eliot and Margo obsessing in their own ways over Mentor Week, and smiles to himself. Out loud, he says, “I don’t know, I never finished my second year - hell, I never properly finished first year but I was moved up anyway. The only Mentor Week I was around for, I had… personal shit on my mind.” Thinking of his dad is still hard, but it gets easier. Another thing therapy helped with.

“That makes me even less convinced,” Angie informs him. “Anyway, you know Runes and Relics? It’s a New Age and magic shop in Brooklyn?” 

Quentin does, actually. He’d gone there in high school because they occasionally had card trick books he hadn’t read, and when Julia had her Tarot phase in eleventh grade he’d bought her a few things there. 

“My cousin Toph manages the storefront - it’s partly a cover, that place. By which I mean, yeah, it’s full of stuff to sell to the mundanes, but there’s also a lot of real shit. Even the stuff for the average Muggle has a little luck or wellness magic to them. They make a lot of the stuff themselves - the whole building belongs to my uncle, who owns the business. They do mail-order magical work, and someone who can not only mend magicked objects but can up the power level? They’ll be interested in you. Just tell Toph Angie sent you.”

Quentin is not a caster; he might be a hedge by some definitions now, but that’s all. That being said, he’s overheard bits and pieces of conversations among other patients or staff here at the clinic, enough that he knows to say, “Does working there tie me to the Devereaux family?” 

Angie blinks, then laughs. “No, don’t worry about that. If you wanted to be bound to us, there are ways for that to go down, but I get the sense that you and your lovely boyfriend aren’t interested in that at all.” 

“No, not particularly,” Quentin says mildly. “Thanks, Angie.” 

That night, Eliot looks at Quentin over the top of the glasses he’s only had for a week. “Caster shop, huh?” 

Quentin shrugs. “I called Kady and I wrote Alice a message before you got home from Yolande’s - apparently the Devereaux clan does work for everyone regardless of specific magical affiliation, and they hire based on ability, not connections. Kady had actually heard they’ve been looking for a mender since their last one quit, but with being out of town so much she hadn’t thought to mention it to me.” 

“Hm. So, you gonna go?” 

“Might as well give it a shot, right?” Quentin says with a shrug. 

And so the next day finds him at Runes and Relics, feeling weirdly like a teenager again as he steps inside. That faint smell of incense is still there, and the wall of tea blends made in-house. Except that now, when Quentin touches the little jars of looseleaf, he gets the faintest hint of something. Not quite a flavor, not when he isn’t touching the tea itself and the spells are mild, but like water that has an extra taste too faint to identify. 

“Are you Quentin?” comes a voice, and Quentin turns to the counter. 

The man at the counter is about Quentin’s own age, with honey-blond hair and bright blue eyes. He’s very pretty, actually, as pretty as his cousin Angie. “Hi, I’m Toph,” he says, offering a hand. 

Quentin shakes hands, and a chocolate taste fills his mouth, rich and dark like the fancy truffles Margo likes so much and will occasionally deign to share. He wonders what discipline that means, but doesn’t ask. He’ll find out eventually if he’s hired, he assumes. “Yeah, hi. Angie said I might be interested in working for you, but I’m… not really sure…” 

Toph grins, and if Quentin’s heart weren’t already fully engaged, that smile might make him melt a little. As it is, he finds himself thinking he’d like to see this guy’s charm in action - as a spectator - because it must be  _ quite a show. _ “Angie said you renewed the spells on your prosthetic yourself, right?” 

“Yeah. I have an ability to sense magic, and the spells at full power cast by someone else weren’t agreeing with me, but when I cast the ones I could and renewed the ones I couldn’t while mending a broken prosthetic, it worked better. I can also strengthen spells as I mend, though I haven’t tried to do just a strengthening on an unbroken object.”

He’s thought about it, maybe as part of transmuting something if he has to be working other magic at the same time, but he hasn’t tested it. 

“Come on in the back,” Toph says, and as they head for the back door a woman a little younger than Quentin comes out, and she looks a lot like Toph and Angie with big blue eyes and blonde hair, but hers is streaked with pink. God, is this really a family operation?

Yes and no, it turns out. Runes and Relics is on the first floor of what used to be an apartment building, and Toph explains that the top two floors are off-limits because they’re still residences. But that leaves four floors in between, and apparently all of them are like the fourth floor where Toph and Quentin get off the elevator. 

On the fourth floor, it looks like most of the old apartments were knocked down, replaced with smaller offices and workrooms of multiple sizes. Some of the doors are open so that Quentin can see that no, not everyone here looks like a blond relative. Almost none of them, in fact, and it makes him breathe a sigh of relief. 

“Hey, Bree, got Angie’s new recruit for you. This is Quentin Coldwater. Quentin, this is Brianna Nolan.” Brianna Nolan looks as Irish as her name, pale and freckly with long dark red hair. Also very tall when she stands up and offers her hand - six feet, or just about. Quentin thinks she must be somewhere in her late thirties, and when he shakes her hand her magic tastes of fresh-baked crusty bread. 

Harmless, if a strong flavor, he thinks, until he goes to pull his hand back and Brianna Nolan doesn’t let go. Quentin looks up at her, caught by her grey eyes. He can’t look away for a long moment, and then she lets go and he can, staggering forward against the desk and reaching up to rub at suddenly aching eyes. 

“What was that?” he asks, barely managing to keep even a semblance of a polite tone. 

“I was scanning your magic - that’s my discipline. And you... Mending and magic-twisting, with affinities for summoning and transmutation. Can you sense spells within objects? That wasn’t clear,” Brianna Nolan says, her voice crisp with no accent Quentin can pinpoint, the perfect blank newscaster voice. It makes his skin creep, just a little.

“While I’m mending, yes. If I’m just touching them, I can usually pick up that there is a spell, but not what.” Seriously, his introduction to magic school involved a near-complete lack of explanations and the dean yelling at him, then confiscating his meds. Now this is his job interview? What the fuck? “Is this usually how you screen your applicants?” he asks, as footsteps make him glance over to see that Toph is walking away. Great. 

“Yes,” Brianna says. “Have a seat, Mr. Coldwater.” 

Quentin considers walking out, but in the end he takes the offered seat. “How many people walk out after that one?” 

“About half, but you’ve seen scarier, haven’t you?” 

Oh crap. Eliot mentioned this after his interview with Yolande, that apparently their names and exploits got around. He’s got a couple choices here; he could try to avoid the question, or he could refuse to be cowed. So he sits a little straighter, and it makes his pants ride up slightly so that his prosthetic is visible. Strangely, when Brianna looks at it like she can’t help herself, that helps Quentin decide on the latter.

“Yeah, I have. So is the scan the interview or is there an actual interview?” Think of it like a card game, Margo suggested when he asked her once how to be more confident, so Quentin thinks about cards in his hand at a Push table and he just knows he can nail the next spell.

“The scan is the beginning of the interview.”

Most of the interview is also kind of familiar from what Eliot told him about meeting Yolande. Brianna has Quentin fix several broken objects. Some of them are mundane but tricky like the watch with tiny smashed gears, while others are magical, like the snow globe with an actual tiny tundra inside, literal cold air escaping from the cracked glass. 

(Quentin would love to learn how to make something like that, and when he says so, Brianna smiles and says he just might get to.)

There’s also an amulet, snapped in half, and when Quentin has the two pieces floating in the air over his hands there’s the faintest ring of bells - the magic of things ‘sounds’ like bells to him when he works like this, while the wood of the amulet itself sounds more like… maybe a flute? Under the sounds is the aftertaste of mint - real mint, as in the plant - and he’s beginning to think tastes on spelled objects match the flavor of the person who laid the magic. 

But that faint ring of bells means there’s only a little magic left. Quentin frowns a little, focusing on that sound and coaxing it louder, stronger - it feels a little like reeling in a fishing line and a little like slowly increasing the volume on a radio. Bit by bit he draws it out till the chime of bells is a bright counterpoint to the sweet clear sound of the wood itself feeling whole, and even the aftertaste of mint is a little heavier on his tongue. 

And there’s one more thing, a whisper in the bells and flute that almost makes Quentin drop the amulet when it settles in the palm of his hand. Brianna told him what spells were on every object but this one, and he has a feeling that too is part of the test. “This lets anyone who wears it astral project?” he asks, and Brianna smiles slowly. 

“I know they didn’t teach you the symbols on that from Brakebills. They get their traditions mostly from the English school and they never got this one.” Quentin doesn’t totally understand that reference but he doesn’t ask for clarification either as Brianna continues, “So how did you know what the amulet is for?” 

Quentin shrugs. “It was - in there. Objects… they know what they are. They have a kind of memory. My magic just reminds them of it, that’s all, that’s how mending works.” 

“You know, for most people mending feels completely literal - forcing the break to be undone, like detangling hair or something,” Brianna says. “Our last mender didn’t describe it exactly like you did, but they also said it felt different for them than it does for your average person casting mending spells. OK, you’re hired.” 

“Just like that?” Quentin says. 

“I like what I see. Stop in with AJ next door, they’ll get you settled in a workspace. We’ll expect you to start by the beginning of next week but today is just for settling where you’ll be.” 

AJ is as short as Brianna is tall, five feet at most, looking up at Quentin with a hand on their hip, their short spiky blue hair bright against dark skin. The effect is even stronger because they’re wearing a jumpsuit in almost the same vivid blue as their hair. “I can give you Nikki’s space - Nikki was our last mender - but you do transmutations too?” 

“So they tell me,” Quentin says. 

“Hmm. Interested in learning crafting? That tends to be the next thing for people who do mending and shifting magics,” AJ asks as they lead Quentin down the hallway. 

Quentin considers that. “If it’s on the table, why not?” 

“Oh, it will be, at one point or another. Mr. Devereaux doesn’t believe in just letting his employees stick with the skills they already have, especially since a lot of people here begin as apprentices.” 

AJ leaves Quentin in a decent-sized office, with a small desk and a larger worktable. There’s even a bookshelf built into the wall. It’s like the modern version of the wizard’s workroom he used to want as a kid, or it will be when he gets set up. 

The idea makes him smile.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

It should be a little weird, maybe, how easily they fall back into a routine, and in some ways it is. After the chaos of the last few years, Eliot does sometimes feel strange about living with Quentin in their apartment, both of them with jobs and doing everyday things like errands and bickering over what TV show to put on. At the same time there’s a weird deja vu to it, because of course they’ve done this before.

Except they kind of haven’t. 

“What do you mean?” Quentin asks when Eliot, in a moment more like Quentin than like himself, says this out of the blue one day. “We haven’t… watched a movie before?”

Eliot laughs, shaking his head. “No, not what I meant. Also, I didn’t mean to say it out loud, you’re contagious.” 

“Very funny, El. What then?”

“This. Just… living a life together. I guess I’m still a little shocked that we have it.” 

“Because of everything we’ve been through?” Quentin asks, hooking his good ankle around Eliot’s as if he has to find some way to touch Eliot now but doesn’t want to crowd him. Eliot appreciates both sentiments, because it’s more than that, isn’t it?

“That, and… I was never supposed to have this. I was supposed to die young, either because I was blithely driving myself to it with drugs and alcohol or because everyone around me said that’s where I was headed if I didn’t settle down with a nice girl in my hometown and bury everything I am.” He hadn’t even been thinking about that, at least not in the front of his head, but now it spills out anyway. “I know they were wrong. That the adults were twisted fucks and the kids were… kids, echoing the shit they heard at home. But I don’t always know it all through me, if that makes sense?” 

Ugh. This is the kind of shit that should probably make him join Quentin in going to therapy, but he’s just… not sure about it yet. Considering it, but not yet convinced.

Quentin says, “No, I get that. I think we all have things that we know aren’t true but we can’t shake anyway, and you had enough people who tried to make you believe that kind of poison that it’s probably even harder for you than it would normally be.” 

“It’s one of the reasons I panicked, that day in the throne room,” Eliot admits. “I didn’t think I could have this. A life in the real world. Not that Fillory isn’t very real, but…” He drums his fingers on his knee and wishes for a cigarette, but he’s been trying to cut down on the smoking and drinking, if not cut them out completely. “At the Mosaic we had, well,  _ the Mosaic. _ Technically, no matter how much it became an afterthought most of the time, we were still  _ on the quest _ for that entire life. That was what I was thinking, actually. That it’s never just been us, until now.” 

“Huh,” Quentin says, slumping back into the couch a little but still keeping his ankle hooked around Eliot’s. “I never thought of it like that, but you’re right. Even living here, up till recently, most of our time was spent working on the timelines mess. So…” He turns his head on the back of the couch to smile softly at Eliot, shaggy red bangs falling half in his eyes. “How do you think we’re doing?” 

Eliot has to laugh. “All right so far, although if you keep making me watch nerd movies I might reconsider that assessment - hey!” he says, ducking as Quentin swings a couch pillow at him. Eliot catches the pillow with his telekinesis, spinning it before dropping it to the floor. He unhooks their ankles and shifts on the couch so he can lean forward, catching Quentin’s hands and pressing him down to the couch. “If you’re going to take a swing at me, maybe I’ll just keep you here.” 

“I wouldn’t complain,” Quentin says, and the gold flecks left in his eyes from the ritual to save Other-Quentin seem to glitter with the same mischief as what’s in the little smile Quentin gives him. 

“I just bet you wouldn’t,” Eliot says, leaning down that little bit more to kiss him. It’s a little uncomfortable in this position, Eliot’s leg giving warning twinges and Quentin’s prosthetic digging into him just a bit, but it’s not bad for a teasing kiss. Bad for making out, at least today, but they aren’t doing that yet. “I think we’re doing very, very well so far,” he adds, punctuating the last words each with a quick kiss. 

Eliot sits up then and after a moment Quentin does too, looking a little more rumpled than might be expected from so little. “Hey, we’re not even thirty yet this time, although you will be next year -” 

“Stop that right now, Coldwater -” 

“And, we already have a home, and holy shit we’re, like, employed members of society.” 

“Magical society. I hope we don’t have to pay taxes.” 

“Eliot, taxes are important, of course we’re going to pay them.” 

“Not with the Orange Ogre in office.” 

“That’s probably an insult to ogres.” 

Which is such a nerdy, such a  _ Quentin  _ observation that Eliot can only laugh. “Actually, probably true. Have we met any ogres? Do you remember?” 

“Truthfully, no,” Quentin admits. “But if they exist they would be insulted. My point was, we’re doing pretty good. Next step, a pet?” 

Eliot rolls his eyes. “We’ll put that under consideration… maybe next year. Although apparently the people with the beehive on their roof across the alley also have a tortoise, I saw their housekeeper sitting outside and she was knitting a tiny tortoise sweater.” Eliot does not mention that said housekeeper, whose name was Ms. Hudson, was a very tall, aesthetically stunning woman who didn't seem much like a housekeeper, but who was Eliot to judge. Also, she'd had a vague resemblance to the late Fairy Queen that was a little unsettling, but she’d been very helpful last week when it had been a cane day and two of his damn shopping bags split open as he walked by the house. 

“A tortoise? That’s a new one,” Quentin says. “Then again, somehow I get the feeling those neighbors are a tad… odd. I get the  _ weirdest  _ magic aftertastes when I walk by there - and if I’m getting them from outside the house, one or both of them must be  _ powerful _ . At least I think that’s how it works, I’m still guessing a lot.”

“Well, if they’re magicians, maybe we’ll run into them properly one day,” Eliot says with a shrug, catching Quentin’s hand again to tow him off the couch to somewhere more comfortable for making out on this particular day. 

Later, it occurs to him that the conversation had derailed a bit, but really, the fact that it had so easily drifted into just being them is a good sign, isn’t it? It feels like one, anyway, so he’s going to do his best not to poke at it. 

And so life goes on, with work and visits from Margo - a few from Alice, even, as she tries to pull double duty with the Library and with rehabbing the ex-Niffins. Eliot progresses a lot in most of his ward training, but it turns out there is one area in which he just can’t quite get the hang of things, at least not completely. Namely, warding objects. 

He can do it with mild spells, that’s easy, and recently he’s had some success at warding metals without them warping. But somehow, he can’t seem to narrow his focus down enough when it’s anything else - or rather, not when it’s a finished product. For example, the first protective amulet Eliot made that wasn’t just practice was for Quentin, and it was made of smooth ebony wood. 

The thing is, Eliot can whittle, carve, whatever you want to call it. His grandfather had taught all four of the Waugh boys before he died, and it was… 

It’s not that he has fond memories of the man, precisely. No particularly bad ones either, but that could have more to do with the fact that Eliot’s grandfather was bedridden for most of the memories he has, and thus not particularly capable anymore of sharing his son’s methods of ‘discipline’.

It’s not out of respect that Eliot kept up the woodworking when he was growing up, it was more that it was a very rare outlet for his artistic side that was safe, much like singing in choir was a way to sing that wasn’t frowned upon. He mostly gave it up after he left Indiana when he could replace it with the more all-encompassing project of himself. He’d kept carving little things from time to time, just for practice; it was never the occasional indulgence that is Margo taking a weekend to paint in oils, or the soothing habit of Quentin’s drawing. 

Just an old habit that he never fully gave up on, but it turns out it is easier to ward objects you make or design yourself than to add wards to someone else’s finished product. So, logically, Eliot had begun by carving protective symbols into wood, or murmuring spells as he shaped it, because he didn’t need to learn the practical parts first like he would for, as an example, glassblowing.

And anyway, wood suits Quentin. Eliot had expected him to keep the carved circular pendant tucked away under his shirts but actually, usually he wears it right out in the open. He says he likes tasting the spices of Eliot’s magic when he fiddles with it, and the shiny dark wood looks good against the blues and greens and deep reds he tends to wear these days instead of black. 

Margo, though. Margo is different. Eliot acquires a piece of glossy black tourmaline, because it’s one of the best protective stones. He asked Yolande why the best protective stone and wood are both black, and she’d said no one really knows, but it works so they don’t push at it. But every time he tries to put spells in it - wards for safety against threats both physical and magical, fetches for luck and clear sight - the stone cracks. This happens with every stone he practices on at Yolande’s workshop, but this isn’t practice, this is for Bambi.

Eliot’s no mender, but he’s good enough to fix the cracks every time. He’s just apparently not good enough to stop them from happening. He could try weaker spells but that would all but negate the point. Which leaves him sitting on the bed midway through a Saturday afternoon, curls askew and new glasses crooked, cursing the air blue as his spells fail yet again. 

“El?” Quentin sticks his head around the doorframe. “Everything all right?” 

Eliot sighs. “Margo’s coming by tomorrow and I still don’t have this goddamned pendant spelled for her. It just won’t work.”

Quentin levers his way over to the bed - he’s having a crutch day, which he does sometimes just to keep in practice - and settles down across from Eliot, good leg curled under him and stump stretched out where it almost bumps Eliot’s leg. “The stone won’t take the magic?” he asks. 

“I’m using too much power. But you can’t cast these with less. It should be able to take it, but I can’t… narrow the field enough. You have to channel this much magic very carefully, and I can do it with metal now without it warping, but apparently stones are not working out yet and metal’s not good on its own for protection. But the stone cracks every time and the spells won’t hold then, obviously.”

Quentin frowns, fiddling with his amulet in a way Eliot usually finds endearing, but today feels like it’s just reminding him of his inadequacies. “OK, so, why don’t I help? I can mend the cracks as they happen, it’s a different kind of cooperative casting, we do it at work sometimes.” 

“Yeah, Yolande’s been walking me through concurrent casting as opposed to the standard cooperative too, but Quentin, I need to learn to do this myself,” Eliot points out. 

“Sure, before you get your credential as a solo wardsmith, but not today for Margo’s gift. Anyway, look at it as practice in alternate cooperative style, for both of us, which you also need to have down pat, right?” 

“‘Alternate cooperative style?’” Eliot echoes, raising his eyebrows. Quentin shrugs. 

“That’s what AJ calls it, though concurrent casting is definitely a little less of a mouthful.”

Eliot rolls his eyes, but it’s fond enough. “All right, let’s give it a shot.” 

So they set the piece of tourmaline on the bed between them, and fall into a breathing pattern - Yolande and AJ use the same one, even if they use different words - before beginning to cast. Eliot starts a beat ahead of Quentin, the stone floating up to hover between them as they work. Quentin’s magic joins the cast a moment later, and - 

Large-scale cooperative magic is a rush, you get flickers and glimpses of being the other people in it. Concurrent casting is smaller, more intimate. Eliot is used to the sense of Yolande by now, cool and flowing water, but he’d been told the effect is stronger the closer you are to your casting partner, and Quentin - 

Quentin’s magic, just his and Eliot’s, it feels like velvet, following behind Eliot’s pricklier magic and smoothing rough edges. And for a moment as the spells crest, one after the other, Eliot thinks he tastes sweet spices and honey and he knows that isn’t him, that’s Quentin’s magic sense reflecting back between them so that they can both sense their magic, both flavors together. That’s - 

“It worked,” Eliot says, blinking open eyes he hadn’t realized closed. He doesn’t even need to look down to the mattress to see, he felt the click of the spells taking hold, he knows it worked.

“It worked, but, um…” Quentin is holding the dark crystal in his palm, and now, instead of being pure iridescent black, all through the tourmaline run cracks of shimmery red. 

“What the hell?” Eliot says, picking up the stone and studying it. “How did this happen?” 

“I think it’s your magic. Other-me, he could see magic as well as taste it, he said yours was a rich warm red, like that. I think maybe somehow the mending… I was trying very hard not to affect your magic, just keep the stone together, keep it strong enough to hold your power. It’s like it took me too literally somehow?” 

Eliot considers this. “Makes sense. Well, Margo will like that it’s different, and I… Actually, I think I like it too.” He does, even if he’s not sure what to make of his magic being red. Red like blood, his darker thoughts whisper, red like flames, but blood can save lives too and it’s just as red then, and he can’t forget how Yolande spoke of fire as equally good and bad. 

It feels like things keep telling him that he’s both, and this is just one more thing. 

But also, this is what happens when his magic mixes with Quentin’s, something lovely and different. “It’s us,” he says after a moment, and Quentin smiles, but there’s a strange thoughtful look in his eyes. It reminds Eliot of something, one of those deja vu moments of Mosaic memory, but he can’t place it, so he lets it go, setting to work wrapping the top of the tourmaline pendant in gold wire so he can make a loop for the chain he bought. 

Their magic really did make something good, didn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40b**

True to his word, Eliot does tow Quentin along when he goes shopping for new clothes. This actually turns out to be more amusing than Eliot might have expected, because Quentin decides to take his role as captive audience very seriously, and literally brought score cards. When Eliot steps out in the first outfit, a dove-grey suit with a green brocade waistcoat, Quentin holds one up that has the number 9 in thick black marker. 

Eliot almost falls over laughing, and the saleswoman looks more than a little amused herself. Quentin manages that little smirk of his, the one Eliot hasn’t really seen in a long time, and that only adds to the warmth the laughter gives him. 

So, in amongst the outfits that get either a high score or a question mark score card with a note under it -  _ I told you I’d be no help at this _ \- Eliot deliberately finds a few ridiculous ones, like the canary yellow suit with a lime green shirt that gets wide eyes from Quentin and a firm shake of the head even before the 3 card. 

“Truthfully, I’d have said 1,” Eliot comments, wrinkling his nose as he looks down at the bright yellow fabric. There are people who can pull off the shade, but he’s not one of them, not in this amount anyway. Smaller amounts of yellow, paired with something else, maybe, but he’s not enough of a fan to experiment with it. 

_ It fits you really well, that earned back a couple points, _ Quentin signs carefully, the hand motions still slow but growing in confidence now as Quentin practices. Eliot suspects that the time spent memorizing tuts is making learning sign language easier - he isn’t progressing with Quentin’s speed, not in using them anyway, but he finds that the tricks he used to learn tuts help. 

And he’s good at remembering what the signs mean when he sees them, which is all he needs to understand Quentin. 

“As if I would ever wear a suit that didn’t fit me,” he says airily, and turns on his heel to go back into the dressing room and get out of this travesty of an outfit. Well. That isn’t fair. It’s a very nice cut, good fabric, he’s sure the right person would look amazing even in colors that make one think of a human Sprite can. Eliot is just not that person. 

Most of the outfits that got Quentin’s question mark card were the suits that are prints, rather than a solid color. Lighter shades, most of them, cream or white or pale grey as a base color and designs in light blues or greens, golds and silvers, some pinks and light purples. The waistcoats mostly match the jackets and pants. He actually doesn’t think he’ll wear a lot of these as they come, but having this much print is good for mix-and-matching. 

Eliot isn’t exactly the undergrad on a shoestring budget he once was, but the trick of buying things you can use in multiple combinations is still a good one. He thinks of it as no different than a painter mixing new shades on their palette. It’s his version of Quentin’s growing collection of art supplies. 

_ “Becoming me was the greatest creative project of my life.”  _

The memory still burns, in its way; how easily he fell for Martin’s playacting as Mike. But with hindsight and the distance of having experienced a lifetime since then, Eliot had begun thinking that Martin probably did that more than once. He’d had the same time his puppeteer sister did to study all of them, manipulate them. He can still remember Other-Quentin’s fierce insistence that Jane was at fault for what happened to them all in every timeline, for all that she’d tried to make Eliot think it was his fault that day in the Clock Barrens. 

None of that can ever fully make up for the fact that Eliot ended up killing a man who’d done nothing but have the bad luck to be possessed, but the truth is what it’s always been - he doesn’t know what else he could have done, and it was Martin and Jane who did that to them, who played their games.

But it’s an old guilt, and the truth of what he’d said that day is oddly comforting now, too. Eliot did create himself, once upon a time. The past few years have felt like a study in breaking down his performance, but now he can build it up again. With clothes and hair, like he did last time, but also in - 

In Margo’s visits and Quentin’s eyes bright with mischief, in what he’d seen one timeline over of what his life could be. He doesn’t want exactly what his and Quentin’s counterparts have - he’s not tempted to go looking for the same apartment in a brownstone or anything like that, but the potential of building a life, that was good to see. 

That’ll take time, though, and for now new clothes are a start, a symbol even, of a new beginning. Also, picking them out is just fun. He can only buy so many, but that’s why he picks the ones he can mix and match - it turns a handful of outfits into countless more, when one also has the option to change the colors completely with an easy spell.

Eliot decides to wear the first suit out of the store, carefully folding away the clothes he’d come in - some of his mourning blacks that he hadn’t bothered to color-change, not when he was buying new things anyway. But on his way to the counter he spots a grey leather jacket, soft to the touch and softer lining inside. 

“This is light enough you could wear it inside, and the grey will match most of what you have,” he says, offering it to Quentin, who looks startled. Eliot knows he’s right, because he’s seen most of the clothes Quentin still has. As for the shirts he ordered online that haven’t come yet, Eliot can guess. The color-change spell worked on Quentin’s shirts, but some of his things are gone (donated by Julia while he was dead, Eliot suspects, but she isn’t here to ask) so Quentin went shopping. Eliot’s pretty sure most of the shirts are nerdy t-shirts in any shade not too bright but also not black.

He also knows that in the bag by Quentin’s feet are multiple pairs of blue jeans. The color-change spell, for some reason, doesn’t like denim as much as it does other fabrics, so while turning some of Quentin’s black jeans blue had resulted in interesting blue-grey or grey-white shades that even Quentin liked, some had just… not worked at all and managed to look more like tie-dye gone wrong.

Thus, before giving most of the day over to Eliot’s shopping, they’d stopped at a little store in Brooklyn and stocked up on some more blue jeans for Quentin. 

“I know you said hoodies don’t feel right anymore, so why not give it a try?” 

Quentin looks skeptical but shrugs the jacket on. Eliot knows it’s a lock just watching Quentin’s fingertips rubbing at the sleeves, finding how soft they are. He wears it out of the store too, and it occurs to Eliot that with his own grey suit and green waistcoat, with Quentin’s green shirt, in their own different ways they nearly match. 

The idea makes him smile as he catches hold of Quentin’s hand and they walk down the street together, slowly because Quentin still has his blue cane in his other hand, and is still not back up to his old speed. “You know we match,” he says aloud, and Quentin turns enough to look Eliot in his suit up and down, then to look at himself, his expression almost comically skeptical. But then Eliot sees realization dawn and Quentin actually laughs, bright and easy like Eliot only heard a handful of times even in fifty years.

He still can’t talk - maybe never will, they don’t know - but he can _ laugh _ , which is enough.

They stop at an art store near the penthouse, and Eliot lingers briefly over a woodcarving tool set, thinking of a little collection of wooden animals that had once sat on his windowsill in his childhood bedroom. They’d all been carved by his own hand and are now hidden away at the bottom of a shoebox of keepsakes. The only things he’d brought with him. He’d whittled at the Mosaic too, something to pass the time - and he’d made a rough flute for Teddy’s tenth birthday, Quentin had almost  _ killed  _ him - but he… He glances up to where Quentin is eyeing the painting options instead of the drawing supplies, a packet of some kind of markers already in hand. 

Hm. Eliot leaves the carving set where it is, picking up a few packets of modeling clay and a medium-sized sewing kit instead. He’d gotten away with making little sculptures too once, because his high school actually had a small art department and he’d been allowed to spend his free periods in the room that served as both art studio and home ec classroom. He hadn’t been able to keep any of what he’d made there, not least because that’s also where he’d learned distinctly “girly” sewing as well as the practical mending anyone on a farm might occasionally get stuck with.  _ That  _ would have gotten his teeth knocked out if his father found out. 

Maybe it’s time to do something with those old skills? Some of the plainer things he bought today could use some decoration, and the idea of doing it himself is… kind of amusing, at least. Worth playing around with, anyway. He’d done that with some of his undergrad clothing, and occasionally at the Mosaic, and he vaguely remembers hearing something about symbol-based spells done with thread, which could be interesting. The clay is just fun.

Maybe he’ll make a tiny collection of clay Margos just to see her face when she’s next in and spots them. The one golden summer they had between first and second year, Eliot spent a week posing for her as she set up her easels and oil paints - one of various extracurriculars her father had paid for, apparently normal in the well-to-do childhood Eliot affects having had but in truth can’t imagine. He never asked what happened to the paintings, it had seemed gauche, but maybe he should. 

She’d painted a lot in that one week, before putting all the supplies and finished canvases away somewhere. Not all of it had been Eliot’s poses. 

He hasn’t thought about that in ages. 

Quentin tugs on Eliot’s sleeve and Eliot blinks, realizing he’d stopped at the corner to wait for the light and then just never crossed, lost in thought. “Sorry, got sidetracked,” Eliot says, and with no free hand to try and sign with and no notepad, Quentin can only give him a worried frown before he almost walks into an electric pole and has to watch where he’s going instead. 

The truth is, Eliot feels a little restless in his own skin now that things are calming down. It’s not that he wants to go back into crisis mode, or that he doesn’t value the time to heal. It’s just - it’s - he doesn’t know, really. He feels strange, is all, even as the person he sees in the mirror starts to look more like the person he’s trying to rebuild. It’s helping, and he knows what he wants to do, but it’s just not all quite  _ clicking  _ yet.

Eliot’s pretty sure once he figures out why not, things will improve, but he’s not exactly sure how to go about doing that.

A few days later, Eliot finds Quentin sitting cross-legged on their bed, drawing on his own arm. “What are you doing? Giving yourself a tattoo?” he asks, sitting across from him.

Quentin gives him a lopsided smile, setting aside the marker - actually, the open pack next to Quentin says it’s a tattoo pen? - and picking up one of his gel pens to write on his notepad,  _ Sort of. I want a real one, at least one, but I can’t do that for myself. I’m thinking maybe wings on my back or something, what do you think?  _

“Sounds hot,” Eliot says lightly, which earns him an amused huff. “What’s with the sudden taste for body art? Or, wait - no, you’ve been doing this for a couple weeks, haven’t you, except with gel pens until now. I meant to ask but I kept getting sidetracked. I forget why exactly.” 

_ Well, we were helping Alice and Margo with their plans, and then Kady wanted us to demonstrate poppers for some of her baby hedges, you wanted to go shopping and both of us have been doing sign language practice? Quentin points out. _

Eliot laughs a little. “Fair point. So why the self-inking?” 

Quentin shrugs, letting his hair fall over his face. Eliot’s fingers itch to brush it back - he used to wheedle Quentin into letting him braid it back sometimes in their other life, so that he couldn’t hide behind it. But he resists the urge, waiting Quentin out. 

_ My body feels wrong, sometimes. A little too tall, or my hair looks like it’s the wrong color, too light or too something, I’m not sure which. And I lost all my scars. I’m NOT complaining, El, you and Alice and Margo built me a body, that’s fucking amazing, I think it’s just adjustment issues. But anyway, it helps to draw, to put designs on my skin that I know I put there. It’s like it’s part of learning to… inhabit my new body? It sounds dumb but I can’t explain it better. _

“I don’t think it sounds dumb at all, actually,” Eliot says. “I think it makes perfect sense, and if I can help you feel more you… Whatever you need, Q.” 

_ I know that. You OK, though? You seem edgy lately. _

Eliot sighs. “Honestly? I think I’m not exactly sure how to handle peace, and recalibrating is taking longer than expected.” He reaches over to touch the green and blue vines Quentin has colored in on the soft inside of his forearm, not even thinking but acting on impulse. He traces the line of them and hears Quentin’s breath catch, his own fingers seeming to tingle at the almost-innocent touch.

But he isn’t sure - they decided to take this slow and Quentin’s level of recovery isn’t certain enough to push anything, so Eliot clears his throat. “What would you draw on me?” he asks, which might not actually be the best distraction, but it’s the first thing he thought of. It makes Quentin grin, all amused mischief, which also doesn’t actually help but is still always a good thing to see. 

It definitely doesn’t help when Quentin lightly cups Eliot’s wrist, studying the bare skin of his inner forearm with thoughtful concentration. Because then Eliot can’t help but think of Quentin’s warm palm pressed to the red braid mark of the spell Eliot brought him home with, of those fingers wrapped around other things. 

But - slow. They’re taking this slow. Right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40b**

Quentin is not an entirely oblivious person. OK, most of the time he definitely is, but Eliot is different. Quentin has the cheat codes for Eliot - not all of them, but more than enough of them to know  _ exactly  _ the effect he’s having as he considers what to draw. And the thing is, part of him wants to just stop, to reach for his notepad instead and tell Eliot that he would very much like to make out now, thanks, and if that leads to more he’s healthy enough, but - but - 

A little of it is the idea of writing that down, since he doesn’t think he knows all the signs for it yet. But mostly he doesn’t want to have to stop what he’s already doing to talk. He’s used to it most of the time, and he still thinks if his voice is the only price to pay it could be much worse but he still - it still fucking  _ sucks _ , sometimes. 

Except - he has his tattoo pens, doesn’t he? One of them is red, and it’s not quite the same warm vivid shade of the red braid mark wrapped around his right wrist and Eliot’s left - that red is almost the color of Eliot’s magic, but like it’s mixed a little with some other color, gold-brown maybe. Quentin can’t recreate that with a temporary tattoo marker, probably not even with paint, but the red tattoo pen is a nice vivid shade, and it’ll make his point. He’s already holding Eliot’s left wrist after all.

So he picks up the red, and carefully starts drawing a Celtic knot on Eliot’s forearm, a twined shape of little braids like the mark they share. He hears Eliot’s sharp indrawn breath as he realizes what Quentin’s doing, but Quentin doesn’t look up, hair falling to hide his expression as he keeps working on the design, lip caught absently between his teeth. 

“You should think about learning ink magic - you’d be good at it,” Eliot says with just a hint of a catch to his voice, and Quentin hums an acknowledgment. Actually, it’s not a bad idea, but, later. Now he has a point to make, and that little catch to Eliot’s words tells him he’s _ making it.  _

Cheat codes, and all.

Quentin finishes the last curve of the knot and sets the pen down, shifting his grip on Eliot’s wrist so he can rub his thumb over the red braid. Eliot looks at the red woven knot, looks at Quentin’s hand, and says in a voice gone slightly rough, “Are you trying to drive me nuts here, Q?” 

Quentin shakes his head, looking up at Eliot with a smile, and then leans in to kiss him, slow and deep. Eliot kisses back, but his free hand rests only lightly on Quentin’s shoulder, and that just won’t do, that is not taking the hint at all. 

So, Quentin climbs into Eliot’s lap and lets go of his wrist to thread both hands into those dark curls like he always wants to do, since the first time he saw that one curl always fall loose from Eliot’s careful styling. Eliot makes a small sound muffled by the kiss and then his hand comes up to grip the back of Quentin’s neck as he kisses back with real heat now. 

Quentin moans softly, trailing his lips down Eliot’s jaw, the prickle of Eliot’s beard against his lips a new sensation but a good one. He rocks himself forward so that Eliot topples back against the pillows and Quentin can stretch out over him, tangling their legs and rolling their hips together. Quentin can feel Eliot getting hard even through both their clothes, and he grinds down even as Eliot fists a hand in his hair, pulling him in for a bruising kiss. And all the while there’s the taste of sweet spices in Quentin’s mouth, familiar now from every time Eliot so much as takes his hand but an extra thrill in this moment.

Quentin wants - he  _ wants  _ to slide down the bed, take Eliot in his mouth before he’s all the way hard, wants to feel Eliot’s cock fill the rest of the way on his tongue, and it’s easier to deep-throat that way too. But, unfortunately, Quentin can’t always catch his breath easily, and a blowjob is probably not the most ideal plan until  _ walking  _ doesn’t sometimes leave him winded. 

So they end up with Eliot’s dress shirt half unbuttoned and Quentin’s Star Trek t-shirt somewhere on the floor, trousers and jeans and underwear only half pushed down as their cocks rub together, hands too busy wandering to reach down and jerk themselves off properly. For all the franticness of not bothering to actually undress, they take it almost slow, until Quentin feels like his blood is sparking but in a wonderful way he’d forgotten, and - 

He comes first, sensitive to contact still, stifling his breathless moan in the bend of Eliot’s neck, and then he does use his mouth after all. He slides down Eliot’s body to clean up the mess he left and then licks at Eliot’s cock until he comes too with a gasp of Quentin’s name and that wide smile he only gets at times like this that Quentin loves to see. 

Eventually, they get just cleaned up enough to stumble shirtless to the bathroom and strip down to shower, hands still wandering as they clean up. Quentin’s three-in-one peppermint soap is gone but he has a candy cane body wash now, and Eliot seems to like having them use the same herbal-scented shampoo (not that you can tell it’s the same after Eliot’s done with the other products he uses). “You are ridiculous, little damn minx,” Eliot murmurs in Quentin’s ear, and maybe Quentin can’t talk but he can laugh and lean up for a quick kiss as the water spills over their bodies. 

“I was trying to behave,” Eliot adds as they dry off and get robes out of the little hamper kept in here for them. That was Eliot’s idea, and literally everyone else had been a little bewildered, but it’s a good idea. Saves needing to remember to grab a change of clothes, anyway. Eliot, of course, has one of his barely-covers-anything robes, in a red almost the same shade as his magic glows under his skin, while Quentin’s is sensible blue cotton and comes almost to his ankles. 

_ Don’t behave, _ Quentin signs, and Eliot laughs. 

“Apparently not. We’ll have to work out a signal for if it’s too much, hm?” 

_ We can do that. Love you.  _

“Love you too, baby.” 

And they can do that, signals, whatever. But it’s - it’s not like sex is some kind of cure-all, whatever some of the fics Quentin used to jerk off to as a teenager said. (Yes, he had a healing cock kink. Yes, he got over it.) 

So, yeah, sex is far from a magical cure, but at the same time Quentin feels less fragile knowing that Eliot knows he doesn’t have to be completely careful with him anymore. He feels a little steadier, a little more real when they stop wearing so many clothes to bed, and tangle together under the covers for more than cuddling, as wonderful as cuddles are in their own right.

It feels like just one more building block in this project of putting himself back together, relearning being alive. 

Another is trying something new, which is why Quentin spends a few days watching YouTube tutorials on working with gouache paint, since he has Brian’s muscle memory for watercolors but this isn’t quite the same. Not being quite the same is part of the point. He has an idea in his head, paintings in the colors of magic, but he doesn’t think he’s ready for that yet. He thinks he might need to draw on Brian’s watercolor knowledge, actually, for what he has in mind, but he’s not sure yet. 

He only means to paint the view of the city from the patio, curled up out there with his fresh pad of drawing paper - the guides said that was good for gouache paint too - but somehow the shapes of the buildings shift a little. Not like Whitespire or anything, exactly, but a little… a little like that, and a little like a city Quentin remembers flying over when he was nothing but a streak of dark gold light in a world made of a paler golden fire, and he used a lot of blue like a miniature palace-cottage made all of blue he remembers seeing in the courtyard of a full-size palace, a single city in a sea of sand. 

It’s clumsy, this painting. It would be; it’s his first. But there’s something to it, New York and not, this world and not. Quentin doesn’t exactly remember everything he saw as he ran through the ambient, it’s more like flickers and images that come in dreams, but as he gets stronger so do they. He kind of wants to record them. He kind of wants to share them. 

“What is that, Steampunk Manhattan?” Eliot asks, settling next to Quentin and draping an arm around his shoulders. Quentin shakes his head as he cuddles into Eliot’s side. 

_ Just practice, _ he signs, and signing it instead of writing is practice too, of course. It feels like that’s what his life is, right now. Practice walking without the cane, practice his sign language, and now practice painting. Noticing the black looped embroidery on the hem of Eliot’s sleeve, he signs slowly,  _ That’s new. Where? _ He can’t quite remember all the signs to say ‘where did that come from’ but Eliot gets the gist. 

“I did it, actually. Who says you get to be the only artistic one in this relationship?” Eliot says lightly. 

_ That’s fair, _ Quentin replies, and he could point out - though this would probably take his notepad - that Eliot’s entire image is an art project, Quentin has never been the only artistic one in this relationship. But he doesn’t; for once he takes the comment for what it is and just snuggles a little closer, absently tracing the black threads. It looks good, he tells Eliot. 

“So does the painting,” Eliot says, and then they watch the sun go down together like they used to do when they were a lot older, in another life. Things won’t always be so quiet, Quentin knows; he and Eliot are off the front lines, it’s true, but there’s always something happening. They help Kady with the research she doesn’t always have the patience or time for, Margo and Alice call or mirror or portal in with projects they want input on - Quentin has a strong suspicion that he and Eliot are going to get drawn deeper into the Niffin rehab thing, but he doesn’t really mind. He is lucky enough to have a second chance at a human life, so if other people need more help with that same chance, he doesn’t mind doing what he can.

Maybe Julia will come back around one day too. 

But for now, Quentin thinks, it’s just him and Eliot, a sunset and ongoing art projects, ongoing life projects. It’s not a bad deal, all in all, is it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Eliot 40a**

When Eliot goes back to Fillory, it’s to get a divorce.

His marriage to Fen is basically null and void anyway, due to the fidelity magic breaking when he was exiled and his time being legally dead. However, the formality of actually nullifying their marriage with a ceremony is… a thing, which Fen has asked him to participate in. 

“If we’re going to make nullification something real that anyone can access, then we should start at the top. High-profile is how Margo put it,” Fen explains to him by mirror-call one day, sounding very earnest about it. “For us, the spell part of the ritual is unnecessary because the magic broke, but we’ve tested it so we know it works and casting it won’t harm us. It just won’t do anything. But doing it like this will tell people it’s all right to do it.” 

Eliot has considered himself functionally divorced for a while now, and he really doesn’t know how common arranged marriages are among the general population, but, well. His own was a fucking mess, to be perfectly honest. If this will help other people in Fillory - people who used to be _ his responsibility _ \- to get out of bad situations, who is he to say no?

Also, according to Margo, she declared both he and Quentin were princes, so they should make at least one appearance. 

“OK, I am fully on board with the official performance of divorce rituals for the sake of making them feel legitimate for general use, but why exactly did Margo give us new titles?” Quentin asks when Eliot fills him in. 

“On the off chance any of our visits are long ones or if one or both of us needs a degree of authority in an emergency, apparently,” Eliot says with a shrug. “Margo claims it’s mostly honorary, just a precaution. But we have circlets, because why not, right?”

Actually, Eliot suspects Margo is having a little bit of fun with all this, but he can’t really blame her. They had their ways of finding fun as monarchs back in the day, didn’t they? “So, yeah, I have an appointment for a divorce ceremony in Fillory. Want to come?” 

“Obviously,” Quentin says. “Not letting you get divorced without me.” There’s something in his expression that Eliot can’t quite read, there and gone in a moment, but he decides not to press. A memory of Arielle, maybe?

And so, after getting time off from their respective jobs, they go to Fillory, where as far as Eliot’s concerned, one of the best perks is getting to see Quentin in Fillorian clothes. “This is a lot like the stuff I wore on the Muntjac, just different colors,” Quentin says thoughtfully, looking down at the black trousers and deep green tunic Margo ordered him into, the trousers and soft black ankle boots designed to cover Quentin’s prosthetic so that the Fillorians don’t question him. The only fake limbs they’ve ever seen are wooden, living wood or not, and Eliot knows Quentin doesn’t feel like explaining modern Earth materials.

“Little fancier maybe,” Quentin continues, “but still nothing like what you or Margo wear. Which is good, because I would look silly.”

Eliot is in silver, tight trousers and a heavy jacket-style shirt - it’s similar to an outfit he’d worn in his High King days, except there’s a green wash to the silver that means, with the subtle silver embroidery on Quentin’s clothes, Margo planned this for them to be complimentary. He does love that woman - it’s just like her. 

“We look good,” Eliot laughs, putting an arm around Quentin’s shoulders and making him look at them together in the mirror. The narrow silver circlet crowns on their heads are almost identical, except for the stones - Eliot’s is a moonstone to match his favorite ring, white and iridescent in the light, and Quentin’s is a shimmery amber-colored sunstone. 

_ “Moonstone and sunstone, Bambi?” Eliot had said dryly when she’d handed them over to him, while Quentin was busy listening to a very chattery delegation of Squirrels.  _

_ “Hey, why not? I thought it was a fun little thing - most people aren’t going to get it, but that only makes it better. Moonstone’s your favorite, and your boy gets the counterpart.” _

She’s right, it does. Quentin got it, to Eliot’s surprise - but then, he’s learning stones more carefully as part of his work at Runes and Relics, so it makes sense that he would learn to spot different kinds of stone. And he knows the moonstone ring is Eliot’s favorite, too.

“ _ You _ look good,” Quentin corrects now, drawing Eliot out of his thoughts. “I look presentable, which is a win for me.” He tips his head up a little to look at Eliot. “You nervous?” 

“No,” Eliot says, and it’s true. “But it is going to be a little weird, isn’t it?” 

Quentin can’t really argue that, and apparently he decides not to try, because he kisses Eliot softly and then they have to go.

The ceremony is going to take place in the largest of the castle gardens because an outdoor wedding has to be undone outdoors, apparently. They give Eliot and Fen a few moments alone, which feels like a miscalculation in general, but who is Eliot to judge? 

Weirdly, Fen actually looks more like an Earth bride than a divorcee in her cream and gold gown, but it’s clearly meant to match her crown. The new High Queen’s crown is white quartz and silver, a replica of the obsidian and blackened metal High King’s crown in opposite coloring. Margo’s idea again, Eliot knows, meant to reinforce that the two titles are now considered as equal co-rulers, officially. 

He should have done that, probably, when he was High King. 

“We both look a lot different from that first day, don’t we?” Fen asks, coming to stand beside Eliot where he’s looking down into the decorative pond. Their dim, wavering reflections look back up at them. 

“You can say that again.” Eliot has his cane today, just in case - his leg has been stiff if otherwise behaving, but having it seems weirdly appropriate because he transfigured this cane to look just like the one he used in a different Fillory in another life. “If I didn’t say before, congratulations on the promotion.”

“You didn’t, and thanks, Eliot,” Fen says. “You… seem happy. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks, Fen,” Eliot says, and the truth is that he’s not sure what else there is to say. Luckily he doesn’t have to puzzle over it for long before they have an audience again, and at that point things become pretty straightforward. He and Fen stand handclasped, a ribbon wound around their hands, and Margo as High King and officiant stands there in front of them. 

“Are you both in agreement to end this union?” Margo asks, and Eliot has to not look right at her because the phrasing sounds nothing like her at all. His gaze falls on Quentin, who is standing next to Josh of all people, but Eliot makes himself focus, meeting Fen’s eyes as she says yes. Eliot echoes her, and then Margo unwraps the ribbon on their hands. She moves her fingers through a tut and then looks up at them. 

“I declare this marriage dissolved.”

And that’s that. So simple, after so much complication. Eliot doesn’t even know what to think; he feels almost dazed. Luckily, it’s not considered appropriate to have a banquet after an annulment ceremony, so everyone sort of… adjourns to wherever they want. Eliot doesn’t look for Quentin now, just starts walking. He needs - something. He’s not sure what. 

But he finds himself in the throne room, staring at the throne where he once sat with Margo at his side, at the dais where he and Quentin were hit with a lifetime of memory. He thinks about both of those things, about being a king, about being a partner and a father, and there’s - it’s - They’re both things he’d thought he’d be a disaster at, and… 

Well. He wasn’t ideal as a king, but he also wasn’t a complete fuck up. The whole reason he’d been exiled was because he was doing his best by Fillory and an asshole goat-man had wanted him to cause hedonistic chaos. Then the fairies got involved, but when Eliot had been in control, he hadn’t done so badly, had he? 

And at the Mosaic… God, he’d been terrified. Arielle hadn’t been, he remembers - Teddy had been a surprise, and both she and Quentin had seemed to view their marriage more as a practical measure than grand romance, but she’d been thrilled. Quentin had mostly fretted about passing on his depression, but Eliot… Eliot had been so afraid that it was - he has a temper, he can be every bit as cruel as the people who raised him when he’s provoked. He’d feared, as he had during Fen’s pregnancy, that a child would trigger off the same violence in him that his father dealt out so casually. Arielle’s baby couldn’t be his by blood but the only way not to be a co-parent would have been to leave, so Eliot had been left to worry.

But when Teddy had been born… It wasn’t as simple as everything cured because he held that baby and fell in love, but he had fallen in love. The idea of harming him had been so deeply,  _ instantly  _ unacceptable that in a way Eliot had almost been angrier for it, because until that moment part of him had really truly believed all loving parents were faking it. The proof otherwise, seen in Arielle and Quentin (later in Arielle’s second husband Merric), and felt in his own heart… It had been hard to face, sometimes.

Still, they’d been a family, they’d done pretty well together, hadn’t they? And he’d been the one Teddy was likeliest to confide in, as he got older.

_ Equally good at defense or destruction… _ For the first time the idea doesn’t seem alien after all. Because he can - he can take care of what matters, can’t he? He doesn’t always know the best way how, but he’s gotten better at figuring it out. And he already knows how to destroy, long since decided that for all he hated being good at it he was more than willing to unleash that side of him if it meant someone he loved was all right.

And he thinks maybe it started here, the ability to do that, to be that. There are worse things to take away from a twisted fairy tale.

“Eliot?” 

Eliot turns to see Quentin behind him, looking a little concerned. “Yeah, Q, just thinking.” 

“Deep thoughts, apparently,” Quentin says, walking over to him. He moves a little stiffly and always will, but by now, if Eliot didn’t know that half of Quentin’s left leg was a prosthetic, he wouldn’t be able to tell. Today, Quentin doesn’t even have his own demigoddess-issued cane, so he actually looks more able-bodied than Eliot does.

Eliot shrugs, but he doesn’t pull away when Quentin slips an arm around his waist. “Growing up, mostly, of all the cliches.” 

“Well, we’re circling the last couple years before thirty, it’s probably a good time for a little cliche, El.” Quentin is silent for a bit, fingers rubbing absent circles over Eliot’s hip, which is a nicer feeling than it sounds like, but Eliot can feel the questions hovering so he’s not surprised when - 

“Do you miss it? Being king, and all?”

Oh. Actually not what he’d been expecting. Eliot hums a non-committal sound, sliding his own arm around Quentin as he thinks it over. “Yes and no? I don’t miss the constant risk of disaster, but… sometimes… the idea of doing something that meant something? Yeah. But it’s not the only thing like that I miss. Which is part of the whole brooding you interrupted.” 

“Oh, I interrupted a brooding session? OK, Heathcliff.” 

“I don’t look anything like Tom Hardy.” 

“I didn’t see the movie so I didn’t know he was relevant, but to be fair the book really isn’t either, the first gen characters in particular are all terrible people which is why I hated having to read that book in tenth grade, but he is kind of the go-to for talking about brooding so I went with it.”

“God, you’re such a nerd,” Eliot laughs. “Do you regret not getting to be a king?” 

“I think I regret more the times I said I’d be back and then I didn’t come back, actually,” Quentin admits. “Admittedly, having a Niffin-possessed king, even a secondary one, would probably have not ended well, but I wasn’t thinking that at the time and all other cases were just me being unreliable. Except when magic got shut off because no one knew that was coming. Still.”

“I seem to remember it being more complicated than that at least some of the time, but we’ve both had our unreliable fuck up moments, Q,” Eliot says, because he can’t pretend he never resented it when Quentin didn’t come back - he’d worried, too, and part of him had been even more irritated by  _ that _ , at the time. But it’s long past, now. “Although it is a pity we never got to have any fun with the roles. I mean, being a king in Fillory was one of your lifelong fantasies.” 

“Technically we’re princes now,” Quentin says, leaning away so Eliot can see his face, and the glint of wicked mischief in his eyes that no one else gets to see. Eliot laughs aloud until Quentin adds, “And, uh, you’re still _ my king _ .”

Eliot stops dead. “Oh yeah? And are you here to pledge loyalty? Right here?” He shouldn’t, Margo and Fen would probably both kill him, but… 

“I don’t think my leg would cooperate with this floor very well, actually, so why don’t we take this somewhere more private?”

Eliot laughs and pulls Quentin closer, kissing him slow and deep right there in the throne room. “I think that can be arranged, darling.”

Eliot is expecting sex when they get back to the room. He is not expecting Quentin to all but shove him back on the bed, then crawl between his legs without removing a stitch of either of their clothing, without even taking off his prosthetic before he’s unfastening Eliot’s pants, pushing them and his underwear down just enough for - 

“Fuck,” Eliot hisses, a hand curling in soft hair as Quentin’s mouth wraps around his cock. He’s only half-hard, caught by surprise with Quentin’s speed, but then that’s probably why - he remembers hazily as Quentin sucks him that Q loves this, loves feeling Eliot harden the rest of the way in his mouth.

It’s nice enough, in Eliot’s opinion, but not a sensation he has a particular kink for when he’s the one giving, but Quentin - Quentin loves it, and Eliot loves that he loves it. Quentin can take all of him like this without hesitation, and Eliot has to fight to keep his hips still, to not choke Quentin as his cock fills. The warm heat of Q’s mouth is  _ maddening _ , and part of Eliot wants to hold Quentin’s head still and fuck his mouth, feel Quentin’s throat work around him almost helplessly, but he holds back, barely.

Q’s eager and messy about it, eyes hot as he looks up at Eliot between his lashes. Eliot bites back a moan, fingers tightening in Quentin’s hair despite his attempt to behave. He’s definitely all the way hard now, somehow aching even with Quentin’s mouth on him, pulling off enough to tease his slit with little kitten licks. Eliot groans, hands twisting in the sheets under him as Quentin lowers his mouth onto him again, then pulls back to tease once more.

“Fuck - that’s - not nice to tease your king,” Eliot manages to say, remembering the hint of a game from earlier. And it was the right thing to say, Quentin’s eyes flashing even hotter as he lowers his head again. He takes Eliot’s words to heart, eyes closing as he focuses all he has on sucking Eliot off, one hand coming up to tease his balls, stroke over his perineum. 

Then it all stops, for a moment, Quentin coming up for a gasp of air and a giddy grin. “Is that better, _ your majesty _ ?” 

And Eliot - normally, Eliot would tell him to get back down there but instead he surges up, flipping them and pressing Quentin down to the mattress. “I think you can give me more than that, lovely boy,” he murmurs, voice low and rough in Quentin’s ear. “I think I’ll have all you can give me, and you’ll let me, won’t you? You can be good for your king, can’t you? Pretty little prince, you can do that for me, hmm?”

“Oh fuck,” Quentin says, and Eliot laughs, low and more than a little wicked now himself as he leans back to see Quentin’s face. 

“That’s not the answer, darling. Can you be good for me?” 

“I - yes.” 

“Still not quite right. Yes… what?” 

Quentin’s eyes narrow for a moment, but Eliot only watches him, perfect High King composure with one raised eyebrow. Quentin swallows hard, biting his already-swollen lower lip. “Yes, my king,” he says, and Eliot rewards him with a deep kiss, pressing Quentin into the bed with the weight of his own body stretched on top of him. 

It’s the work of a quick spell to send their clothes off to a corner of the room, a moment more to get Quentin’s prosthetic off and send it telekinetically to rest on the table. But the crowns, well. Eliot’s stays, Quentin’s flies to rest next to his leg. 

Then Quentin is pulling Eliot into a kiss, eager and biting. “Thought you were going to  _ take me _ , my king,” he says, bratty and teasing all at once and oh, Eliot will get him for that. 

They end up on their sides, Eliot biting at the back of Quentin’s neck as he presses his fingers inside, magical lube but still working Quentin open slowly, feeling him shudder with each twist, with every stretch as Eliot adds another finger or scissors them. “That’s it, just like that for me… would you have been this good for me in the throne room, darling? If I bent you over my throne right there, if I had you kneel before me and use that mouth of yours?”

“I - yes -  _ please  _ -” And Eliot liked the force of Quentin earlier, the wicked mischief and the insistence of shoving Eliot back on the bed, but he loves this too, Quentin trembling and breathless, rocking back on his fingers. 

“Good boy,” Eliot says, pulling his fingers out and slicking up his cock. He turns Quentin’s head so he can kiss him again, swallowing the sounds he makes. “I should have kept you at my side and never let you leave me,” he breathes, and it’s - it’s part of the play but it’s true too, isn’t it? There’s a moment when they both still, the serious weight of it, but then Quentin nuzzles Eliot’s jaw and he remembers himself. He wraps an arm around Quentin’s waist, holding him still as he pushes inside him.

Eliot holds there, hips twitching with the need to move, but he’s waiting for -

“Please,” Quentin gasps again, and now Eliot obliges him, setting a quick rhythm as he moves his hips, all but losing himself to the feeling. He has just enough focus to keep Quentin still with one arm so he can’t match Eliot, can’t urge him to go faster. He can only take what Eliot gives him and Eliot feels it, when Quentin melts into him, surrendering to it.

Eliot comes with a low moan muffled against Quentin’s hair, pulling out carefully before wrapping a hand around Quentin’s cock, stroking until he comes with a shudder and a low whine. “I’m going to have to remember that little kink,” Eliot says when they’ve caught their breath, curled together after a clean-up spell took care of the mess, Eliot’s crown removed too now and sent to the table.

“Hmm,” Quentin sighs, nuzzling Eliot’s chest hair before settling with his ear over Eliot’s heart. “Good idea,” he adds, and then his breathing evens out. Eliot chuckles softly and pets over Quentin’s hair, closing his eyes and relaxing into the bed. 

Hazy-minded, half asleep, it’s easier to think of what had been so heavy earlier. And so Eliot is able to think maybe this is growing up too, slipping off together in the middle of the day just because they can, because they want to enjoy each other. Eliot will think about it later, because right now he has a beautiful man in his arms, a man who is here for keeps. 

He and Quentin have each other, for fun and forever, and they’re out of the game. 

If that is growing up, well. Then Eliot is all for it. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


**Quentin 40a**

The day after they return from Fillory, Quentin sends Alice a message by way of the enchanted notebooks, because he has a particular errand to run that he can only do with her help. Or, theoretically, he could ask Dean Fogg, but that’s just not something he’s willing to do. So Alice it is, and in the meantime, he has something else to occupy him. 

He hasn’t been able to get the image of Margo’s necklace out of his head, the one he and Eliot made together. Eliot’s magic, shimmering red against the shiny black stone, like that kintsugi thing he used to see online but so much more personalized. He tried to recreate it on its own, because since the moment he saw it he’d had an idea, but it doesn’t work when he’s alone. 

He uses a cracking spell to break piece after piece of the moonstones he bought, and his mending fixes them all good as new, but that’s the problem. Good as new. Damn it. 

Finally, he realizes he’ll have to have someone help him, and… On the one hand, it feels kind of cheap to get Eliot’s help with something ultimately meant for him, but it feels worse to think about doing this particular magic with someone else after he discovered it with Eliot. Maybe it won’t even work with someone else, but Quentin doesn’t really want to try that either.

So Quentin asks Eliot to cast the cracking spell while Quentin casts after him with mending. He brings a handful of the moonstones so that the one pale purple one doesn’t stand out too much. Eliot looks down at them and raises an eyebrow. “Why are you experimenting with various colors of my favorite stone?” 

“Because I was able to get ahold of them easily,” Quentin says. He’s a terrible liar and they both know it, but he deliberately approached Eliot when he was distracted by take-home work from Yolande, since it makes him less observant. 

Only slightly less, though, unfortunately. 

“I think you’re scheming,” Eliot says, eyeing him over the top of his glasses. 

“Well, if I am, you’ll be the first to know, now will you help me?” It’s more than a little embarrassing, under the circumstances, but Quentin will make sure he does everything else himself that he can, so that makes him feel a little better. 

But at least it works. They cast together as they did for Margo’s amulet, and shimmery red lines run through each whole piece of moonstone. The rest of the work is Quentin’s to complete, and he does most of it in his workroom at Runes and Relics when he’s between jobs, because Eliot really will be suspicious if he sees a half-shaped silver ring. It was hard enough just to get his size from one of the rings he’s currently not wearing. 

One day, Quentin may be able to do forging spells that let him make things from raw materials. Today is not that day, however, and so he starts with a simple, thick band of silver. Deliberately too thick to be a ring as it is, he uses shaping spells and transfiguration to create a ring out of it. Smooth silver, with a setting for a round stone to sit half inside the band. Working the metal leaves him with a sharp tang on his tongue, not quite a flavor he can name but definitely something. 

When he’s mending metal, it ‘sounds’ like drums to his magic, but this isn’t mending, as he finishes it off with charms against tarnishing or bending, and one to keep it from getting lost. 

He turns his attention to the stones then. One of the things Quentin is really good at is color transmutation, so his plan is to change stone and red cracks to the colors he wants. That’s why he asked Eliot to do more than just the stone he wanted, so he’d have ones to practice on. It takes three weeks - first, he can’t change the magic’s color even though the stone changes easily, and then once he does get both changing, the right colors aren’t working. 

Until, finally, he’s got a row of blue and green moonstones, their cracks glittering in multiple colors. Finally, all of them turned exactly the shades he’d pictured as he cast. Which means… He picks up the purple moonstone and focuses as he casts, picturing the pale purple stone darkening to the shade of a plum, and the red cracks shifting, keeping some of their red but adding orange-yellow-pink until the cracks nearly glow in the color of a peach. Actual peaches, not the pinkish shade of peach paint or dye.

Quentin feels it, the soft sigh of magic properly applied, and dares to open one eye just long enough to see that yes, the colors are exactly what he wants, before he focuses again. Shape, smooth, a perfect oval stone and a powdery feeling in his mouth, join that to metal and its tang, set the stone in its place, and  _ hold  _ until nothing will break it. 

For a moment there’s just a hint of the spice of Eliot’s magic, a hint of a sweet sticky flavor that is Quentin’s own, and then Quentin opens his eyes to the sight of a completed silver ring on his desk, set with a purple moonstone like an iridescent plum, the cracks in it shimmering peach. 

Peaches and plums.

Quentin sets it in a little ring box but before he can do anything else, there’s a knock on his door. AJ is leaning on the doorframe, looking their usual vaguely amused self. “You’ve got the Head of the Library here for you? I know you did that shipment of broken equipment from them last week after Quinn requested you, but the payment was in trade?” 

“Just my cut, the business still got paid per usual ways,” Quentin says, putting the ring in his locked drawer and reaching for his cane. He’s carrying it today because his hip’s been acting up. It happens sometimes, because no matter how good it is, a prosthetic will never be an actual leg. It’s not the hospital cane he was issued, but one that just… appeared by his side of the bed one morning. 

It looks like a cliche wizard’s staff down to the amber crystal at the top, but somehow its grip, weight, and length are absolutely perfect. The first time he touched it, his mouth filled with the taste of champagne - Julia’s demigoddess magic. And the little note signed only with her name had pretty much clinched it. 

Shaking off those memories, Quentin goes to the elevators to find Alice waiting for him with an unfamiliar man in a grey suit who turns out to be a Traveler. Before Quentin can do more than say hello to Alice, the guy puts a hand on his shoulder and they’re in Alice’s office. Library Traveler Guy leaves them alone and Alice looks at Quentin, folding her arms. “Nice work on what we sent you, but why do you want to do this, Q?”

“Because we’re responsible for them. You and me, and I guess our 40b counterparts too. I just want to know if they at least managed to survive the Chatwin sibling war, you know?” Quentin can’t think of their fight with the Beast in any other way now. Not after what he knows of Jane’s manipulation of his Timeline 1 self, not after what Other-Eliot said about what Jane told him in the Clock Barrens.

“I did tell you the bridge between past and present was delicate,” Alice says evenly. “We’re lucky a splinter timeline was all that happened.” 

“I know, Alice,” Quentin says with a sigh. “But the fact is still what it was then - we didn’t have a choice, not when we’d had no way to know when Mayakovsky would be himself again. And given that I’m willing to take this as my payment for that mending job you wanted me to do, I don’t see the problem.” 

“You’d make a terrible freelancer if you only do trades, you know,” Alice says, but there’s a hint of amusement behind her disapproval now, so Quentin takes it as a win. “Or are you going to stay with Runes and Relics forever?”

“Good thing I’m not a freelancer then, but believe me, if I ever go solo, and I might, people will pay. Brakebills, for example, is gonna pay through the fucking  _ nose  _ if they want to hire me. But for the head of the Library, when she’s someone I trust? A few trades here and there just to make sure I don’t get a rep for being a pushover seems good enough, don’t you think?” 

“I think you’re spending too much time with your boyfriend, you’re starting to sound like him.” 

Quentin doesn’t think that’s really true, but he also knows that for Alice to joke even a little about him and Eliot is - real progress for them. So he just smiles. “Well, these things happen. So, do we still have a deal, Madam Head Librarian?” 

OK,  _ that  _ might have sounded a little like Eliot. Or a lot, judging from the force of Alice’s responding eyeroll. “We have a deal, and you are impossible. Why not just use the Brakebills one again, anyway?” 

“Because the last thing I want to do is ask Henry Fogg for a favor, that’s why,” Quentin says as he follows Alice out of her office and down the hall. “So… How’s Charlie doing?” 

Alice sighs. “He has good days and bad ones. They all do. It’s not like I was, it’s not even like what other-you went through after he woke up. They all just… reverted back to humanity. They weren’t dragged out of the magic into corporeal bodies. He says it feels like a dream he had, a lot of the time, except that he knows the dream was real every time he sees his reflection. They don’t really remember how human bodies  _ work _ , what hunger or thirst or tiredness means. So it’s touch and go.” 

“And how are  _ you  _ doing?” Quentin asks. “With everything, I mean?”

Alice shrugs, running a hand through her hair. It’s not a gesture he remembers her doing much before, but it’s shorter now so maybe that helps? “I guess you could say I’m touch and go too. Having Charlie back is… bittersweet and a damned miracle all at once, but it brings back memories. Mostly I’m just glad that I have the resources to help. I’m setting up ways to track all the Niffins - Margo might have mentioned it because she wants to check through Fillory?”

“Yeah, she did. What are you gonna do?” 

“A bit like the Brakebills globes, actually. It turns out that the returned Niffins have a slightly altered magical signature, something about the way they were returned, I think. Anyway, it’s distinctive, and I think I can tweak the magic-tracking spells to look specifically for people with the mark of being Returned, as they’re calling it. And I’m setting up spaces for recovery. Actually, I wanted to ask you, what was the name of your therapist?” 

“Miranda Barlow, why?” Quentin asks, a bit puzzled by the turn in the conversation.

“Because anyone who runs a long-distance network like you said she does might be able to consult with me on how to do that. A lot of the Returned are going to need therapy. They’re people out of time, most of them. Some to degrees that are horrifying. That’s on top of the possible guilt for things they may have done.” 

Alice’s jaw is set, and Quentin reaches for her hand on an impulse, squeezing it quickly before letting go. It gets him a fleeting, tired smile. “Some of the ex-shadeless are having trouble too, in that sense,” she adds. “But I’m - I like doing something that matters, you know? After all the awful shit the Library did, it feels right that one of my first big projects will be to help a bunch of people. That one of them is my own brother, and that what they’ve all experienced is very close to something I’ve lived through… Well, that only makes it feel more right.” 

“I guess it would,” Quentin says, and then they’re at the Library’s Tesla Flexion and he doesn’t have time to say anything else. It doesn’t look all that different from the one he used to talk to Alice 23 back in the day - it just has the same vague greyness and odd tilt that everything in the Library has. 

He steps inside and waits, one hand gripping his cane so tightly that his fingers start to ache. 

“Now, if he’s still alive, this is going to be Quentin 41 from today’s date in his world, not from 2016,” Alice reminds him before she starts the machine, waiting until Quentin looks over and nods before she does so.

And then, once again, he watches a person from another reality take shape in front of him. “What the fuck,” says Quentin 41, looking around with wide eyes. “Where - how -” 

“Calm down,” Quentin says quickly, remembering the unconscious younger self in the dreamscape. This other-self in front of him is as far from that half-grown boy as Quentin himself is, it’s there in his eyes, but probably in very different ways. He’s wearing Fillorian clothes, similar to the ones Quentin wore for Eliot and Fen's divorce ceremony but the tunic is deep blue and the trousers a soft grey, trimmed in paler blue embroideries. Someone not Quentin 41 had a say in the look, Quentin would bet quite a lot on it. 

His hair is long enough to be braided back, and on his head is a familiar silver crown. “You’re actually doing the kingship thing?” Quentin asks before he can stop himself.

“You aren’t? Who are you anyway?” Quentin 41 asks, crossing his arms.

“Timeline 40, or half of it at least - it’s complicated,” Quentin says. “So it worked then. The tips you were given.” 

“Tips?” Quentin 41 says. “Actually, that explains a few things. Yeah, I guess you could say that, 40. Thanks for creating us, by the way, you pissed Jane Chatwin off really badly.” 

“Good,” Quentin says flatly. “Is - is everyone alive, in your timeline? El and Margo, Alice, Jules, Kady, Penny? They’re all OK?” 

His counterpart’s face softens and he smiles a little, lifting a hand to adjust his crown. “Yeah, so far so good. Is that why you called?” It’s his left hand that he’s using to fix his crown, and on his pointer finger he wears a ring that looks very much as if it’s designed to look like the High King’s crown.

In Fillory, engagement rings are worn on the pointer finger of the left hand. Isn’t that a funny little coincidence.

“That’s why I called,” Quentin confirms, remembering the feel of the second of his two wedding rings, because that had been the one he’d gotten to wear as both engagement and wedding ring. “Wanted to make sure.” 

_ She said we’d already won, _ Other-Eliot told him, weeks ago. _ I asked her to help me save my Q and she told me to let the dead stay dead because we’d already won.  _

It’s very possible there’s a part of Quentin that’s been afraid for the fate of Timeline 41 ever since he heard that, despite Jane Chatwin being manipulative as hell even at the best of times. Timelines 1-39 were on Jane, but 41… Like he’d told Alice, Quentin feels kind of responsible for them, enough at least to have felt the need to do this, to know one way or the other if everyone lived, at least.

“Thanks for checking in? And for the tips, I guess, though they got kinda lost in translation,” Quentin 41 says. 

“Technically the tips weren’t me, 40 kinda… doubled. It’s a long story, and so not your problem in any way so not worth telling. But you could say both versions of us and our Alices are why you exist?” 

Quentin 41 laughs. “Thanks for that then. Most of the time.” There's a glint of gold on his right hand - another ring on his right index finger, but Quentin can't make out any details from here.

Two minutes isn’t a very long time at all. After a moment of silence, he’s gone, this new other-self who apparently actually is the king Quentin once asked to be and never lived up to. 

For one flicker of a moment, though, there’s another Quentin there. Not solid, just a ghost, a Quentin with loose long hair and golden eyes, dressed in what actually looks like a red Fillorian tunic but with faded blue jeans. It’s the Quentin from 40b, Quentin is sure of it, and he actually laughs, lifting a hand in a wave that gets him one in return, the red braid mark on Other-Quentin’s wrist almost the same color as his tunic. 

And then - 

Then Quentin is alone. Alone in his skin, alone in his timeline, with the two other surviving versions of himself back off to their lives, as he should be off to his.

Quentin takes a deep breath and steps out of the Tesla Flexion, managing a weak smile for Alice. “Well, that’s that then, isn’t it?”

“They’re all alive,” Alice says. “That’s more than we managed.” 

Quentin isn’t sure if she’s thinking of herself or Penny, or even Quentin 40b. He supposes she could really be thinking of all of them - all of it would be true. “It is. Alice, look - thanks, I appreciate it.”

Alice smiles a little. “Well, you weren’t wrong when you said we are a little bit responsible for them. I wanted to know too, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to have any more conversations with myself.” 

“Can’t blame you there. I’m glad to be done with it - we did good but it was… definitely weird, and I’m ready for things to be quieter. That being said, I - if there’s anything I can do, with the Returned or the ex-shadeless, you have my number.” 

“I thought Eliot said you guys were on research-only duty.” 

“Yeah, we are, but I think helping you with something like that is mostly research-related, so it’s all right.” 

“Hmm,” Alice says. “Well, I’ll keep it in mind. You heading home?” 

“Yeah - well, by way of Kady’s place. See you around, Alice.” 

“Bye, Q.” 

And so Quentin leaves, thinking somewhat inexplicably of a night in the penthouse kitchen, closing a book. He doesn’t know why, but it’s the image he carries in his head for the rest of the way back to the penthouse portal. Kady looks surprised to see him but only says, “Next time warn me when my place is going to be Grand Central?” 

“Fair enough,” Quentin says. “Oh, Toph said to tell you that your special order’s in, come by to pick it up whenever.” 

“Cool, I should have time tomorrow. Thanks, Coldwater.” 

“Anytime.” 

Quentin goes back to Runes and Relics, collecting the ring and going to AJ’s office. “Hey, can you just check my spellwork, make sure it’s all sound?” he asks, handing them the ring. 

“Sure.” And AJ is thorough, which is why Quentin went to them in the first place. Quentin watches nervously as they examine the ring, with lenses and spells, even dipping it in a bubblegum-pink potion that turns crimson as the ring falls to the bottom of the beaker. 

After that last test, AJ cleans off the ring and puts it back in its box, handing the box to Quentin. He curls a hand around it, trying to hide his nerves. “Excellent work. We’ll have you making things for us anytime. Was that a trial piece to prove you were ready?” 

Quentin rubs a thumb over the fake velvet of the box, thinking of the ring like a High King’s crown on Quentin 41’s hand, Other-Quentin’s red braid. Funny, how things seem to echo each other across lives, but always a little different. He knows that better than most, after his dreams of other timelines. 

Maybe that’s a good sign, or maybe Quentin was right all along and destiny is bullshit. But a pattern is a pattern, and the patterns here are promising, in the long run. 

“Actually,” he says with a smile, thinking that he wants to just ask Eliot tonight but he won’t, because while he’s no showman some effort is the right call here, “if all goes well, it’ll be an engagement ring.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn! (FYI, I am vocally anti-s5 on Twitter so if that bothers you, stick with Tumblr.)


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